Happy Friday, friends! It is an exceedingly gloomy day here, with rain expected pretty much all day, but I am thankful that it is rain and not snow like we had earlier in the week and that I don't have to walk to work in it -- getting to the office half soaked was always such a drag in the old days. Today is Rainbow's last day of school before she's off for two weeks of spring break, and we're headed to Florida on Sunday (let's not talk about the fact that I haven't even started packing yet). I'm still going to be working while I'm there, but the ability to work while sitting on the lanai in the sun makes it much more appetizing!
Today I have another cautionary tale to share, another chapter in the long saga of the m*th infestation of several years ago. I've tried to be vigilant, but they're tough buggers to kill. When I took out my dress form to take photos of the secret design project the other day, I found some more damage. The dress form lives behind our bedroom door, and I've had what I now know is a bad habit of tossing shawls and cowls over it when I'm not wearing them. Of course, this is creating the perfect conditions for those little buggers: woolly items that I've worn (so they have body oils on them and thus a scent) in a dark area. Fortunately, I found only one item really damaged, but sadly it was my first Hitchhiker, which was knit from handspun, and in a truly ironic twist, I only just recently tossed the little ball of yarn I had leftover from the project.
This and two other handspun projects that were closest to where the m*ths seemed to be congregating went into a hot bath (everything else was inspected and then put into individual Ziplock bags), and once they were dry, I found some close-enough yarn in my stash to repair the holes.
If you enlarge the photo to see the repair more closely, you can see that the repair yarn isn't a perfect match, but I think it's close enough. After I did some duplicate stitch on both sides of the holes, I needle-felted the areas a bit just so that the ends of where the yarn was chewed through don't go anywhere. It's a bit upsetting that this happened, but I have only myself to blame for not taking better care of my handknits, and truly fixing the holes took maybe 10 minutes. I did find some m*th damage to an old sweater, one that was my first adult-sized sweater that never really looked good on me, so I've taken it as a sign to finally unravel it. It was knit from undyed non-superwash wool yarn, so it'll make some excellent dryer balls!
While I haven't started packing things like clothes or toiletries yet for my trip, I have of course planned out what knitting I'm taking. My Love Note, though it's grown quite a bit the last couple of days, is staying at home, but I need a bigger project to take with me, so I've been swatching for my Birch Pullover using the yarn I bought from Dusty Tree a couple of weeks ago.
My first swatch was on the size 2 needles recommended in the pattern, but last night I started another using size 3 needles because the gauge was looking a bit small (yes, I cheated and measured before blocking, but I figured I might as well start another swatch given that my time is limited). The sweater does call for positive ease, so I'd rather I have fewer stitches per inch than called for than more (in other words, I'd rather have my sweater turn out a bit larger than it should than smaller). I'm also planning to take some fingering weight yarn to knit a baby gift and a lighter version of the secret design project. And my mother wants to learn C2C crochet, so I expect we'll be visiting Michaels while we're there to get supplies.
I hope your day is less gloomy and m*th free! Have a great weekend!
