Monthly Archive: February 2015

This tidbit of information comes to you from a physical therapist I had back in Maryland:

Knitting and crocheting injuries have their own ICD code. “2015 ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Code E012.0: Activities involving knitting and crocheting.” This code will be replaced by the equivalent 2015 ICD-10-CM Code of Y93.D1 when the US makes the transition on October 1, 2015. (more…)

“The special quality of beauty in crafts is that it is a beauty of intimacy. Since the articles are to be lived with every day, this quality of intimacy is a natural requirement. The beauty of such objects is not so much of the noble, the huge or the lofty as the beauty of the familiar. People hang art high up on the walls, but they place objects for everyday use close to them, and take them into their hands.”

– Yanagi Soetsu

Yanagi Soetsu (柳 宗悦, March 21, 1889 – May 3, 1961), also known as Yanagi Muneyoshi, was a Japanese philosopher and founder of the mingei (folk craft) movement in Japan in the late 1920s and 1930s.

I’m preparing to start work on Debbi Stone’s Spectral, using a Miss Babs gradient set in Pegasus. Assuming I don’t pull my hair out in the process of splitting the balls of yarn in half by weight (and then further marking off another 11 grams on one of those balls), the next step will be to cast on.

Now, really. Is there any reason it has to be a long-tail cast on? Couldn’t I use, say, a cable cast on, and not have to either a) redo the cast on 4 times to finally get enough in the long tail, or b) have an egregious excess of yarn in the long tail going to waste?

Following the cast on are 4 rounds of k1, p1 ribbing. This ribbing is repeated as the last 4 rows before the end, and the cowl is bound off in pattern.

Thoughts?

After nearly a week of fighting the good fight, I believe that my immune system has started its slow capitulation to the inevitable.

G has been sick with a miserable cold since last weekend. I haven’t seen him this sick in years. I’ve been doing what I can for him, while at the same time trying to do everything in my power not to catch the plague. I thought I had things under control, but over the last day or so, I think I’ve started a downward slide into the ick.

I was feeling kind of achy (more so than usual) yesterday. Over the course of the day, I started to get that ‘lungs are heavy’ feeling. By last night, my eardrums were itching. This morning, I’m sneezing, and I have a sore throat.

I figure I have 2, maybe 3 days until I completely expire. *puts wrist to forehead*

No, no. Nothing that dramatic. I’ve just watched G go through the whole thing this week, and I’m not looking forward to what’s to come.

Even recent readers will likely remember the Flore hat that I made in December of last year. As luck would have it, there was enough leftover yarn from making that one to… make another one! This way, the original recipient can be utterly mortified at her mother wearing a matching flower petal hat. Sounds fair, no? (more…)

My sleep schedule is more broken than usual, at the moment.

After getting about 90 minutes of sleep on Tuesday night, I managed to make it until about noon before my brain keeled over. I spent the rest of the day not-quite-resting, and finally managed to get some real sleep starting around 9PM last night.

It’s now 4AM, and I’ve been up for an hour. While I may have some thoughts about the differences between a 4AM wakeup and one that takes place at 5AM, I stand firm in my belief that 3AM is simply out of the question on the ‘reasonable time to wake up’ scale. It’s too late to take any additional sleeping aids, but is also too stupidly early to be awake.

So, I knit, and continue on my latest Netflix binge and work on getting to some things I was supposed to do yesterday before my brain went offline. I’m not sure how long I’ll last today, but hopefully it will be longer than yesterday.