Friday morning random

* I did run too the quilt/yarn shop. Found a nice, slightly-brassy-brown shade of Berroco's Vintage, and bought the 3 skeins required by the pattern. I've already started it and while it requires a tiny bit of concentration, the amount it requires is low enough I can read while I do it.

I like Vintage. It's one of those wool-acrylic blend yarns, but its texture is nicer than many of the less expensive ones (like Wool-ease). It's what a described a long time ago as a "well behaved yarn" - it doesn't split, it's nice and smooth, it has good stitch definition, it doesn't have weird knots or color shifts or vegetable matter in it.

It may not be a very sexy yarn, but it's dependable and it works up well. (Heh. I guess if I were a yarn I'd be more like Vintage than I would be like one of the novelty yarns or one of the Noro yarns - there's not really anything all that unpredictable about me, I'm dependable to the point of boringness. But then again, that means if I say I'm gonna do something it gets done....)

* I also realized last night that I have a bunch of skeins of duck-egg-green yarn somewhere deep in the stash that I originally bought for the Tilted Duster (until I bought some Peruvia on a good closeout and in a better color for it). I could repurpose that into Flax when I want to knit Flax: so, I get something out of the stash AND I don't have to spend any money (other than what I spent 5 or so years ago) for it.

* I'm currently reading Louise Penny's "A Rule Against Murder." This is a mystery but it's more "literary," I guess you'd say, than the typical mystery. I am enjoying it a lot. The detective involved is named Armand Gamache - he is Quebecois - and he and his wife (Reine-Marie) are visiting a lodge for their anniversary when the murder happens. (The murder happens in a family that is, the best I can say, somewhat dysfunctional in a "meaningful silences and things said that don't sound cutting to an 'outsider' but are to an 'insider'" sort of way.)

I like Gamache. (I like Reine-Marie, also). He seems like a good man, an honest and ethical man. He loves his wife greatly, he appreciates the ordinary pleasures of life, like going swimming on a hot day, or coffee after dinner, or being able to lie beside his wife in bed and doze on a rainy morning. After the murder, he tells a young member of the Surete who is trying to make the sort of laughing-past-the-graveyard jokes that it is okay (and he implies, even preferable) to be moved and shocked by what has happened, even though it is something police see very regularly. Thus, he is a man who has kept his humanity despite being a homicide detective.

I THINK Penny has written other novels featuring him; when I finish this one I think I will track them down.

I like books that have characters - especially the protagonists like Gamache - who are simply decent people, people who have a strong streak of compassion in them. (I think that's why I like mystery novels in general; by and large the detectives I read about are people who look on human barbarity with sadness and regret and who have a desire to do what they can to restore the functioning of life).

* I also read "Nurse, Come you Here!" over break. This is the second book by Mary MacLeod about her experiences nursing on a Hebridean island (and beyond; this book covers her "retirement" and her family moving to Nevada and California. I presume this is going to be her last book about nursing).

I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one; I think her "best" stories went in the first book but this one was still good.

And she referred to something in nursing that I didn't really know about, but that makes sense. (I don't know if it's still done). It was called "last offices." In cases where the death is clearly due to "natural causes" and will not need to be investigated, the nurse washes the body, changes the sheets if necessary, puts a clean garment on the person's remains, and generally, makes things such that it will be less traumatic for the family to see the body of their loved one.

I suppose care has to be taken in cases where the death was due to some infectious illness. (In fact, in Liberia and other west African nations, it was suggested Ebola was spread in part because of the practice of family members washing the body of the deceased)

To me "last offices," the name, almost seems to have a religious undertone, and I suppose you could argue in a way what the nurse was doing was a sacrament of sorts - doing something kind for the family and honoring of the person who once inhabited that body.

I'm guessing it's a hard thing to do the first time as a new nurse. I would find it hard to do. I'd do it if I had to - there are things that are more important than your own feelings - but I would find it hard.

It's just that there are all these things related to jobs people do that people not doing those jobs never think about.