Red emergency!

The most noble goal of finishing some of my knitting is being fulfilled. Sort of. The other day, I finished and mailed off a pink leftover scarf for Sadako. When taking it from storage, I did notice a small hole, fixed it as best as I could and thought something about those mysterious bugs that get a gnaw or two of fibre without leaving excrements and that was it.

Three days ago, I decided that the time was very ripe for the mostly blue sweater. I got the yarn in around April, after a heat wave when it started to be cold, because I wanted something warm and cuddly. First problem was that I made the body way too narrow, some fifteen centimetres narrower than my chest. I decided that I'll rather lose ten kilos to make it neatly fitted, not disgustingly overstretched, which says more about my historical optimism than an actual statement of historical optimism. Second and major problem... well, I used the afterthought heel approach to the neck hole, I picked out the closing thread, got the live stitches on the needle and seriously cussed about a dropped stitch five rows after the cast-on. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it wasn't a dropped stitch but that someone took a gnaw of my yarn... again. I cussed wildly, put the sweater on my mannequin and went to do something else.

Yesterday, I was spinning and found several gnawed-out holes in the centre of my alpaca batt. Bug is not relying solely on sheeps' wool, apparently. I grabbed the spray insecticide and used it liberally on whatever woolen I could find and then I continued to freak out. I might have a thousand skeins of yarn, in various odd places, for goddness' sake, and fabrics, good part of it is silk, and the collection of kimonos, generously soaked in moth balls, but who knows whether the crap it works. The only way how to get rid of bugs, apart from some highly poisonous and possibly illegal methods is to freeze the yarn, thaw it and to repeat the process a few times week after week because moth eggs are not killed by frost. In theory, I could wait a few months and spread my precious yarns in the garden but there are flaws. A few months. Also, my mother would kill me if she knew that i own much more yarn than she thinks. (x)
Tomorrow I need to plunder the drugstore for as potent pesticides as I can get. And cedarwood oil, which only repels them but it smells nice.


(1) I must've mentioned it somewhere. She thinks hobbies are a mental illness. Possibly with the exception of weeding, mowing the lawn and cussing weeds and lawn and whining about the lack of will on the part of other family members to mow or weed.