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.

  

  

Four Years Later

Four long years ago, I bought the pattern, yarn and beads to make this:

Photo from Susanna IC

(Seychelles by Susanna IC)

And I studied the pattern, and studied the pattern and studied the pattern, and................ then I chickened out.

But the project nagged at me.  I had the yarn:

Miss Babs Yet, in Seychelles color---made for this project by the gifted dyers at Miss Babs.

I studied the notes on others'  finished projects on Ravelry, and suddenly! I understood the pattern.

No more procrastinating! Here is the first of 19 repeats, and honestly, it is EASY! I have made other complicated projects in the past four years, and now, by comparison, this looks to be a breeze.

No mistakes so far. AND I learned how to add beads as I go. See them there? On the right?

YAY me!

(It ain't braggin' if it's true, you know.)


OH! OH! OH!
It just occurred to me that Miss Babs will be at SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) in October. I'm sure I'll find yarn to replace the yarn I use in this project, and LOTS more! I LOVE Miss Babs yarn and SAFF is the only place it's available in person. 

Been There, Done That, Bought the Shirt...

literally.

What we didn't buy was a lot of yarn.  This was our fourth year at SAFF, so I guess we've become more blasé or selective or something.  

I bought yarn for just one project:  The Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl:

knit from The Unique Sheep's Tinsel Toe yarn, gold to green gradient colorway:

This shawl has eight charts.  And all four of us bought a kit.  What WERE we thinking???

(Yarn fumes.  It's the only answer.)

My only other purchase was some bison yarn for older daughter:

I have, over the years, purchased yarn made from llama, alpaca, sheep (of course), mink, cashmere, mohair, possum, and now bison.  

So that was the Fair.

Random shots from the weekend:

A trucker with a good Halloween sense of humor...or a trucker we don't want to meet---

 Some well-packed dogs.

Our little rented house in Weaverville, NC.  It's a lot larger than it looks thanks to an addition on the back.

Welcome to Weaverville!!! They are such kind and generous folks.

Really, they are.  We spent some time in greater downtown Weaverville.

Some truly great decorating.

And that's all, folks!

Ooops. No it's not.  I forgot our mascot, provided by Sallyknit!

That's all Blogger would let me transfer from my phone, but I'm sure you remember the rest of the lyrics.

Listen to them enough, as we did, and you may never forget them.  

SAFF

Tomorrow I leave for a long weekend at SAFF (the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair), in Asheville, NC.  Four of us have gone there the past few years and had a great time.  It's literally everything from sheep to shawl, although we have sworn off any yarn-buying this year.  Right?

The past couple of years, we've had the use of an apartment, but it is not available this year, so we have rented a house.  The apartment came complete with celebrity gossip magazines last year, but I think that the house will not.  So I bought these today when I went to the grocery store.  Yes, I was kind of embarrassed and I did feel as if I should explain to the teenaged boy checking me out that I don't usually buy this sort of thing, that I know I am the wrong demographic for them.  My proof is that I don't even know who Emily is!!!

But then I decided that he probably really didn't care.  I bought them and moved on.  Last year we took turns reading them aloud; whoever just couldn't knit ONE MORE STITCH would read to the other three knitters.  We're stocked up for this year.

Traditions are important!  

Serendipity

Again.

This time with mawatas. We bought them months and months ago to make silk mittens with. The Yarn Harlot had written about doing this, and we figured, with no good reason, that if she could do it, so could we.

Using this silk as yarn involves pulling these unbelievably thin mawatas, or silk hankies, out and sort of twisting the fiber a bit until the thickness is right for the intended project.

Isn't it pretty?

L and Sallyknit, while we were all in Asheville for SAFF this weekend, tried to turn one of the hankies into yarn. They succeeded, but only in getting what could more accurately be described as thread. They also tried to knit what they pulled into the ribbing for mittens, but that was not successful either. The mittens would have been very teeny-tiny.

On our way home from Asheville, we somehow turned off the road onto the wrong exit road, and ended up sort of ....not lost really...but sort of dislocated. Suddenly Sallyknit yelled, and I do mean yelled, "Yarn!" We stopped on a dime and this is what we saw:
A beautiful yarn shop in Hendersonville, NC. Not only is the shop as perfect inside as it is outside, the owner is a specialist in dyeing fibers, and especially SILK fiber!!! We mentioned our failure with our silk hankies, and she took us to the back of her shop where she was knitting a scarf from a hankie she had dyed herself. The scarf was beautiful.

The owner gave us a little demonstration on pulling silk from the hankie---and no kidding---we can do this! We decided to make scarves instead of mittens---we don't much wear mittens in Georgia, but a silk scarf? We can wear that all year long.

Serendipity. It's a wonderful thing!