Knit Crochet Blog Week Day Two

Day Two (Tuesday 12th May): It’s All About You.
Cast your hooks and needles aside!
This year you are challenged with one of those tasks that some bloggers can find quite daunting: but there’s never a better time then when we’re all in it together, so let’s shift the focus and turn the attention from the things we make to the things that make us.


     I've never been one to delve into my personal life very much.  I guess that talking about my projects, the yarn I use and the patterns I like ,is personal to a certain extent.  To other knitters just talking about yarn is probably very personal.  I've been thinking about this prompt all day in fact.  I thought about explaining what I do for a living, but Medical Technology/Clinical Laboratory Technology/Medical Laboratory Science, whatever the heck we're supposed to be calling ourselves now, tends to be rather complex.  The simplest explanation is that I analyze blood and body fluids such as urine.  I perform complete blood counts, basic metabolic panels, types and screens and urinalysis just to name a few.  Lab Tests Online is a great resource for explanations of test names and what they're looking for.  Next time you go to the doctor and get some blood work done, think of me.  I'm the invisible person testing all the blood you had drawn.  It is very rarely glamorous, but I find it extremely interesting.  Each tube of blood is a mystery, a puzzle for me to solve.  I work with computers and big analyzers with probes, tubing, drains, valves, lots of mechanical stuff.  Not everything I do is automated.  About 30 percent is still manual.  So I work with reagents, stains, microscopes, tubes and slides.  I guess you could say my profession is as much art as it is mechanical.  It's a lot like knitting when you get right down to it.  There are several ways to hold the needles and produce tension, but ultimately a knit stitch is a knit stitch.  The art is picking the color yarn, the fiber type or dying it yourself to get the perfect color.  Then pairing the yarn with a pattern and vice versa.  If you knit a pattern that calls for bulky yarn with fingering, the dimensions probably wont work quite right.  Just like if you try to run a CBC through a chemistry analyzer...  (What you'll get is a Hemoglobin A1C, which is not a CBC, but is important when monitoring diabetes.)


I wish this is what I looked like at work.



     Apart from being a scientist in real life, I also have a love of science fiction.  My love of the shows Stargate and Star Trek should be evident to my regular readers.  I'm also a fan of many other shows, the more recent of which have a fantasy overtone.  I enjoy reading, again I like science fiction.  I also love animals.  I grew up on a dairy farm in Northern New York, so my love of animals began very young.  Eventually I want to have a small hobby farm of my own.  If I have my way it will be filled with fiber producing animals.  Realistically I'll probably have a couple rabbits, a goat or two and maybe some ducks.  In the mean time, I have three lovely cats to spend my knitting time with. 

    
     I like to do outdoor things.  But not right now, as the trees are budding and the pollen turns me into a walking sneezing machine.  Since we've moved to this new apartment we can have bird feeders.  We have three, a normal bird seed feeder, a suet feeder and a hummingbird feeder.  I had no idea it could be this fun to just bird watch.  On a daily basis there are birds at all three.  Yes, we've already had hummingbird sightings!  I suppose I'm becoming an old maid.  Sitting here knitting while watching my favorite shows and the birds at the feeders... oh well.  Boring is fine in my book.  Alright enough about me.  Who is everyone else?  
Tune in tomorrow for another topic.
Until later.  Happy Crafting!
-Q