Of tartan and wool...


Celtic Fling 2006 was a BLAST. Yeah, we had a Fleece To Shawl, we had fun, we got totally rained on, we sold the shawl with proceeds of around $70 for Children's Miracle Network. Aparently, despite all that activity, the guy with the camera found other things to photograph. Not a single shot of the F2S, nothing of the adorable lambs, not the sheep hearding that was so interesting...no, it seems that while I was looking at men in short skirts, my men were looking at girls in short skirts. Well, some of them are really darling girls so why n

ot?
I love watching the Highland dancing. I actually prefer the technical aspects of the Irish step dancing more, but the costumes of Highland are by far my favorite. So feminine and attractive. The Irish Step costumes are gorgeous in their complexity, but they are just too flashy and modern for my tastes. Take a look at that little girl in the first picture. Could you make that face and sweeter with a wig of ringlets and a rhinestone tiara? not in my book.

And the latest on the mystery project. This pattern is going nicely and fast. It does have a sideways border to it so I know progress will slow down then.
as only another nurse might understand...

Note: reposted because Blogger seems to have lost it!
It's just not possible to describe how one nurse feels when a family member chooses to follow her into the family of nurses. The closest I can think of would be when your daughter becomes a mother herself. You cry for them. You cry because you are proud, because you know how much joy it will bring them and you cry because you already know the pain they will have to endure. Nursing is not a job, it's not a profession, it's not even a 'lifestyle'...it's a commitment. A commitment to put others ahead of yourself. A commitment to take a bullet for someone you don't know and may not even like. A commitment to always fight for the most defenseless
individual on this earth no matter how downtrodden, no matter how mean, ugly or abusive, no matter how arrogant or abrassive ...no matter how much it makes you cry. It's a commitment to cry...lots and often. A nurse, unlike any other medical professional including doctors, cannot ever refuse care to a patient for any reason. The nurse is the only medical professional whose mandated position is as the patient's advocate. Their voice when they have none. Their protector. Their confidant. Their confessor and their priest. Their best friend and their family. Sometimes their cheerleader and sometimes their taskmaster.Do nurses cry? Oh yes. Sometimes for ourselves. Sometimes for our patient. Sometimes for the family. Sometimes for each other. Sometimes for the whole situation, but we cry. We cry in shock, in sorrow, in relief, in joy..but we cry. We cry ALOT.
Here's to praying (for in the end that's the support nurses need most - PRAYER) that the newest member of my nursing family, my beautiful neice Heather, will learn to cry for all the right reasons. How else can I possibly express how proud of her and her choices to join the family of nurses? Of course...I cried.
Words...
Listen to Your Words by Kelly Meuller
- In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 - 1968)
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
- Henry Adams
US author, autobiographer, & historian (1838 - 1918)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language", 1946
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)
As you might notice, I have a new feature on the blog. Audio files. I honestly have no desire to do a full blown podcast, but I do occasionally find a song or audio file somewhere that just says it better than I ever could. In those cases, I'll include it here. Right now the program I'm using only works well on .wav files which will play easily - but slowly - on Quicktime. I'm working on that to make it a bit friendlier for dialup accounts. You might find it easier to right click over the link and download and then listen to it. Another feature I've added is a link blog. I still can't get the RSS feed on this blog to cooperate, so I created a sister site on blogspot that you can use to link over. I'll try and remember to post an update on that site so that you know I have a new post on this one. It's a real bother but until I figure this issue out... Well, it's what I have. If you want to go to that spot and create an aggregator link the address is here http://outofhandpodcast.blogspot.com/