Some Variety

I thought I'd tell you about a couple of different things today!

Firstly - I've been obsessively spinning this week, and I finally have something to show for it:

The bobbin on the left has been plied; the one on the right contains a single ply that needs to marinate for a day or so before I wind it up and ply from both ends of the ball (my favorite 2-ply method to make sure all of the handspun singles are used!).

What is all of this, you might ask?  The story is - several years ago now, I received this gorgeous dyed roving from - Neuro!!! (I'm going to have to start referring to her as Neurodyer!!!).  She dyed the Corriedale roving to match the colors in the Georgia O'Keeffe painting, "Only One" (seen in the postcard there).

You might next ask - why did I wait so long to do this?  Well - I really wanted to do something super special with this amazing roving, and I have to admit that I was pretty intimidated by that aspect of it, as well as the fact that there is so much of it!  What could possibly merit such a work of art?

As usual, I made it too complicated, and then it dawned on me - keep it simple and elegant.  So - I'm going to spin it all into my usual 2-ply heavy fingering weight (I'm incapable and unwilling to spin anything else, unless it's a 3-ply!), and I'm going to weave as many scarves as I can with it, keeping one and giving the rest to special others (if I wait long enough again, perhaps Neuro will be surprised when she gets hers???).  I need to clear a space for the loom, and then do some practice weaving first, but I'll be sure to provide those updates here as well!

On a completely separate note -

I have a small pile of books that I’ve read recently and would like to mention here from time to time.  I blog a lot about knitting and yarn, but not so much about the oogy stuff – although my non-professional thinking tends to split about evenly between the two subjects.

The book that I wanted to tell you about first is the last one I’ve finished - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.   I’ve had it for some time now, and actually went on a spelunking quest in the unpacked book boxes to find it a few weeks ago.

In my reading experience, there are books written about the coolest things ever, but they are impossible to finish because the writing is just not compelling.  This is not the case for this book – Skloot is obviously an accomplished science writer; she also went above and beyond to research and investigate the issues and people behind this story.  She makes them all come alive while, at the same time, describing the history and science in ways that are easily understood and – well, compelling.

In a nutshell – back in the 1950s, prior to any serious or systematic thoughts about ensuring informed patient consent, cells were taken from the cervix of a female cancer patient and liberally utilized and distributed by the physician-researcher.  It turns out that these cancer cells, likely also fueled by some combination of HPV and HIV, lived and multiplied voraciously in vitro in a time when few cell cultures survived at all.  These cells became very popular for use in many kinds of research by literally thousands of researchers.  The cells are known as HeLa (Henrietta Lacks), and many of us schooled in the hard sciences will remember hearing about them and reading about them within the context of this research.  I always thought how nice it was to have standardized cells for all this research – like with standardizing the genetics of research mice, this allows the researcher to control for a certain degree of biological variability.

Skloot’s book covers this science very clearly and completely, but she also describes the darker side of our society – scientific research without consent, racism, misogyny, and poverty, among other things.  And a few things I could never have imagined – including how many in Henrietta’s family, not educated in the field of cellular biology (this is a statement, not a judgment), thought of each instance of these cells as an instance of Henrietta.  For example, if the cells were being blasted with radiation, some family members imagined Henrietta the person, although long deceased, being burned and in pain as a result.  They were proud of the contributions their Henrietta made, but there was a lot of confusion and hurt regarding how much of Henrietta’s “essence” remained in these cells and what that meant for their beloved family member.  I’ll be honest, this was eye-opening for me; I think of cells as just that – they are cells, not as the manifestation of a person.  I’m so glad to have a better understanding of this other worldview.

If you like reading about science and society, you’ll love this book!