Y93.D1

I am just back from a long weekend in Black Mountain, NC and Asheville, NC.  A group of us attended SAFF, the big animal fiber fair held on the WNC Agricultural Center grounds.  

The leaves had the generosity to change colors as we watched.

There was little color when we arrived on Thursday, but by Sunday, after a cold front blew through, this is what we saw from the deck of our rented house on Black Mountain.

We were a little disappointed though---in the past, the event took place in the arena where cattle auctions are held, and it was larger than the new building we used this year.  Imagine this area filled with all fiber-related vendors and displays:

This year, the arena held goats and sheep and at the top, above the seating, were the gorgeous angora rabbits.

Really, there IS a rabbit in there!

This is a French Angora Rabbit, cleaning his ears.  

There was a seven-year old girl with us, and boy-howdy, did she want a fluffy rabbit!  But her grandmother held firm, and no one carried a rabbit back to Atlanta.

Partly thanks to the cold, and then the rain, and then this:

we stayed indoors and knit. And knit. And knit. The owners of the house were pretty adamant that yes, there are bears (and snakes) so we lit a fire and enjoyed the company of the ten of us who went up the twisty, turny, hairpin turns on the sometimes paved, sometimes not, roads up the mountain.  

Yarn was bought; needles were bought. Other knitting-related items were bought. (Passive voice to avoid identifying the guilty)

One of the group made these bags to hold our purchases:

What, you might ask, does Y93.D1 mean?

Well, just in case you work with yarn or other fibers, Y93.D1 is the medical billing code for knitting/crocheting injuries. Really!

There is a code for that.

  

  

Surgeon?

My husband asked me recently what kind of doctor I would be if I were a doctor. I don't know why he asked, but I immediately answered "a brain surgeon." I had given this some thought a couple of years ago when my daughter needed brain surgery and I read a lot about the topic. I've considered other activities as well:  if I were a baseball player, I would be a pitcher; if I were a professional tennis player, I would only play singles, etc.. Keeps my mind from obsessing about the possible apocalypse or about conspiracy theories.

Today I had to fix stitches in my Shelby Pattern. It's knit with fine lace yarn, and it's intricate, and when I finally had conquered the lace portion, after ripping the whole thing out twice, I messed up the border. It's supposed to be garter stitch, but on the purl side I kept purling the border stitches instead of knitting them, and so I was getting stockinette stitch. (Non- knitters may want to bail on this post.)

I set up my surgery station and started work:

I had all the correct tools: two sizes of steel crochet hooks, the Ott light, and the attached magnifier lens. After about an hour, I was able to put the first five stitches back on the needle and purl across the back to get to the last five stitches and fix those. But---ACKKK---now I had done something wrong and had too many stitches in the first lace section and I couldn't figure out how that happened. I tried; I really did.

And I ripped the whole thing out once again. 

So I have concluded that I lack the dexterity necessary to perform brain surgery. Patients are safe from me. I know it's a poor workman who blames his tools, and I can't do that, but I do think that if I were a surgeon, I would have a better surgical assistant than Baxter. He did check everything out and he approved of my set up and tools, but then he just kept getting in the way. 

I have fired him.