This is me, Jet: Shepherdess, Fiber Artist and Instructor of Celtic Crossroads

I thought you'd like to see who I am. I know I don't look the part of shepherdess, but I assure you I am. Between Bud, my dog, and Norphan, our barn cat, not to mention twenty-one sheep, five alpacas, twenty chickens, one rooster, eight guineas, I am a very busy person. I forgot my house cat, Miss Lacey whom I've had since 1994 when she was between 4-6 years old, and predates my marriage to Lance. We had nine guineas until earlier this winter when she, at least I think it was a she--hard to tell with guineas, fell into the stock tank--and drowned--poor bird. Chicken, our only surviving chicken--the only one we named--from last year went broody this summer and hatched two new chicks, a rooster and a hen--beautiful as far as chickens go. Their dad, the rooster, is a beautiful jungle fowl and seems like he's right from the jungle with bright greens, reds and browns with a smattering of yellow and gold hear and there. The chicks look like mom, beige,s light yellows with some dark brown spotting, but that's fine... Not every bird can be as spectacular as the rooster. They're all surviving the winter pretty well and seem very healthy. That makes me happy.

I've been working on scouring my wool all autumn and finished about 5 fleeces. In between fleeces, I've been working on a sweater for Lance, my hubby, as well as working on spinning more yarn from the fleeces I already have scoured. Scouring a fleece is washing them in spinning-ese. It takes a lot of work as the lanolin really has a good hold on the wool, so it takes about 2-6 scourings to get the wool where it is not only clean, but still retains just a tad of lanolin, otherwise the wool has lots of static and I have to add a bit of cream rinse or another type of oil to it so it's easier to work iwth. I've beena busy woman, to say the least. I also went to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Show (aka OFFF)in September. The reason I buy more fleeces and fiber at OFFF is that I like trying to spin different types of wool and because I cannot raise all the different types of wool there are (there must be over 400+ varieties worldwide not including the crossbred sheep who have different characteristics of their parent sheep), I do buy a fleece or two.

I picked up some beautiful steel gray mohair, some lighter gray alpaca, and some dark gray Shetland. I'm reallyu into the natural colors, specializing in grays because they dye so beautifully when I do dye them--the yarn comes out sort of heathery with the color darkest where the white fibers are and the darker fibers still have a bit of color, but you cannot see it as well--very pretty that way.

Here's a small bit of sheep information: Sheltand sheep are considered a type of primitive sheep, like my Icelandic sheep and Finn sheep (aka Finnish Landrace). As a matter of fact, they're part of the same family, so it's nice to have it. Each sheep has a wool even if their families are related, but the wool itself is slightly different whether it's the coarseness, the scales or how much crimpt it has, so the wool's "personality" changes from sheep to sheep and breed to breed. That's what makes spinning such a challenge. You need to understand the characteristics of the wool you have in order to spin it to make the perfect yarn for that type of wool.

An alpaca and/or llama lesson: Alpacas have a finer fiber, llamas slightly more coarse than alpacas, and don't have much crimp at all, though there are some that do. There are two types of alpacas: huacayas and suris. Huacayas have a fluffy, finer and less crimpy fiber, but very soft. It also has lots of static so you spin it before you scour it as alpacas and llamas have no lanolin or oils in their fiber. They keep the static off, as well as bugs, by rolling in dry earth, so they tend to be very dusty animals. Suri alpacas have a fiber that has some crimp and look like dread locks. The fiber is almost like silk in how it spins, but it's still a very lovely fiber, as silk is. It's hard to spin either silk or Suri alpaca, but once you learn the trick of it, it's not too hard. Spinning any fiber, no matter what kind, just takes practice. Alpacas and llamas come from Peru in the Andes mountains.

About me personally, I've had severe chronic head pain since Dec. 2, 1993, after the MD and the hospital botched my brain surgery by leaving me with a cerebral spinal fluid leak for 3 days. They had me on my back for about 18 days, so I spent a total of 21 days in the hospital...not good for the muscles or my exercise program, so when I got out, I felt quite weak. At any rate, the MD who did the surgery would not prescribe me any pain meds but Tylenol 3 and that never touched the pain I had. On a scale of 0 being no pain and 10 being as much as you can handle without being dead, I had a level of 10, so all I could do was lay in bed and throw up if I wasn't in the emergency room where they'd give me a dose of Tylenol 3 which didn't work. So, I'd go home and throw up everything they'd just given me. I never thought any one could have that much pain and still be alive. I felt so bad and needed the help, but they just didn't seem to care. I suppose the neuro-oncologist and the hospital thought I was going to sue for malpractice, but that was furtherest from my mind. I just needed relief from the pain. I complained often enough that the MD who did the surgery suggested I see a psychiatrist, who suggested I learn some hobbies and things to help distract me from the pain, but all the things they suggested, I was already doing and then some.

I also lost my job because I worked in the academic section of the hospital (the University of WA Medical School, BTW, and worked for the Chair of orthpaedics). I was there every day except when I was so ill from the pain I couldn't stop throwing up, and I was there trying to learn a new job because it was part of their ploy to distance themselves from me to get me to quit. They moved me from the office I shared with the Head secretary in the Chair's office to a windowless cave. They said I needed to work for a new physician and do all the same work as before I did for the Chair (Resident's Resaerch Days, the LeCocq Lecture in Orthopaedics, etc.)--so I had 3 times the work and learning a new job, in addition to losing all the perks I had. I felt so betrayed, especially since everyoen who was my "friend" decided that they couldn't even talk with me. I felt it was a scheme on their part to get me to quit by overloading me, but I hung in there until I got the flu from someone. I was so ill, I was off for two weeks, then they *strongly* suggested I take permanent medical leave. Nice of them, wasn't it? At that point, I didn't see how I could work with the amount of pain I was in, so I complied. I was so happy I had chosen to get as much disability insurance from work as I could get without paying much extra and so I get 60% of what I used to earn.

I am so glad I was managing an aparment building while I was working at the university and saved some money--not much, but it helped put away a small nest egg--without it my medical bills would have put a real crimp in our lives. My daughter and my former spouse helped me manage it when I couldn't do the work, but it worked out fine for a while. So, between my SSDI and my private DI, I was able to keep a roof over our head and our lifestyles didn't change much except for the severe, chronic level 6 pain once I was on the patches anyway. Before the patches, I was always in bed and throwing up so that was when I needed their help the most. I cannot explain how frightened I was about not being able to take care of my daughter. That was the worst thing about the pain and not being able to work. I loved my job a lot and I've always loved working--that was the second worst part, and I lost all my friends from work--that was the third worst thing, but it was better to lose people who weren't really my friends, than it would have been to keep them around and lost them when things got really bad, if you know what I mean.

I wasn't receiving the help I desperately needed, so I found another MD in a city about 1.5 hours away and he did some acupuncture, which didn't help me the pain, but did relieve some of the stress the pain caused me, After seeing me for a few months, he suggested I see an MD at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, WA, at their Pain clinic. They prescribed a few things, some worked, some didn't, but the one drug that finally work was a transdermal patch called Duragesic, generic name, Fentanyl. It worked better than the other drugs they tried (Percodan/Percocet, morphine, methadone & about 20 other drugs), but without the many side effects the other drugs had and it actually helped the pain, so I finally had a chance to have a drugged but decent life. I had an 8-9 yo daughter to take care of while I was in pain, in bed, and tossing my cookies continually--not much of a life there, was it? At any rate, once I got on Duragesic, it didn't work like they said it would. You're supposed to change the patch every 3 days, but it didn't work that way for me. I had to change it slightly over every two days because then I'd be in withdrawal and in pain otherwise. Not good at all.

The MD never did take any responsibility and he's now the Chairman of Orthopaedics at the UC-SF. I had a career track going and I was going to school nights to get my secondary degree, so my whole life got side-tracked while his went on to "stardom" in the medical field. Yes, I am still just a tad angry abotu what happened, especially seeing he never admited he made a mistake nor did the hospital, but for the most part, I try not to think about it because it breaks my heart by how much I lost and the price my daughter had to pay because of it.

My current husband, Lance, has stuck by my side since before we got married. After we'd been friends for about a year after meeting on Match.com, he invited me down to stay with him for 5 days while his daughter was in Hawaii with his former spouse and my daughter was with her dad at his family's home. About two months before we actually met, we were starting to have a deeper relationship.

The reason Lance asked me to visit him in Southern California (aka SoCal) was because a man I was seeing, who had proposed to me three months earlier, dumped me. He said it was because he felt a woman should be more acquiescent to a man like in the Bible, and didn't like the fact that I had both male and female friends, so he ended it. I was hurt, not as much as he thinks I was, but I figured that would happen after his Grandmother warned me about him and his ways. She didn't want to see me get hurt and we're still friends to this day. It was great because Lance and I had been growing to love each other over the time we emailed and talked on the phone, so when he proposed to me after dinner while dancing to Ottmar Leibert's Nouveau Flamenco, I wasn't surprised. I was a bit afraid and asked to give him his answer in a few days, but it was a yes and I flew back to Seattle with an engagement ring on my finger. I'm not a diamond sort of woman, so my engagement ring was a pretty large amethyst with a slew of small diamonds around it. I love my engagment ring though it's not traditional and it's perfect for us as we were both born in February.

We celebrated the day he proposed before I had my surgery on Dec. 20, just in case. With outpatient brain surgery, I wasn't sure if I'd even be alive or not and I wanted some happy for him to remember me. I wasn't being pessimistic, but more of a realist because in life, you never know what is going to happen. I went in for the first surgery having a tumor taken out and look at what happened, so I wasn't taking any chances. I called my daughter and told her I loved her and the same with my stepdaughter. I have two really good kids, you know, and a very wonderful husband that I'd never give up for the world.

So, life is good, and with any luck at all, when the surgery heals in a couple weeks, and if the pain has departed even 10%, I'll have the best Christmas and New Year's present a woman could ever have. If you're ever around Walla Walla, on Highway 12, you might see our sheep and alpacas in our front pasture amongst our apricot, peach, and trees.

Please pardon any typos this time around as I'm still recovering from my surgery. Thanks. Have a very happy New Year, Bloggers. I hope you get what you want for the coming year in terms of goals and such. Hugs to you all!