Yesterday, I attacked the dining room. After three and a half hours of dusting, spraying, tossing out, and vaccuming, I managed to find the top of my horizontal filing cabinet dining room table. It’s kind of odd to walk into the kitchen now because all the clutter you could see from the kitchen doorway is gone.

I’ve gotten two of the main rooms in the apartment cleaned, and now The Husband is talking of inviting people over. He even mentioned names of people who are coming to town for business. The hallway is still cluttered, and we won’t speak of the condition of the main bathroom. *gah*

My Ribby Cardi is all seamed up and blocked (well, as blocked as I thought it needed to be). I even gave it a test run today at work. But it’s zipperless… I’ve never put a zipper in anything. I’m not sure if I want to try doing it by hand, or if I want to take it down to my parent’s and have my mom and her fancy quilting sewing machine help me. I have my own sewing machine, and I think I even have a zipper foot, but damned if I know how to use it.

I picked up a copy of KnitLit the Third on Saturday at my LYS. I’m not sure what I think of it so far. A few of the stories I’ve read so far left me thinking either “Why should I care?” or “Whatever.” Stephanie‘s story was funny, but she has a very easy going writing style. Several of the ones I’ve read seem to be trying too hard…. trying too hard to be funny… trying too hard to be different… trying too hard to be literature. I’ve had a hard time connecting with the writers and what they are trying to convey. Steph’s story is easy to empathize with… I can easily imagine the jitters I would get being forced to wait for long periods of time after my knitting had been taken away from me by airport security. But I’m still trying to figure out why I shouldn’t knit and drive as one of the stories admonishes readers. The first two KnitLit books had stories and essays that were heartfelt and invoked reading enjoyment through a shared sense of knitters as community. This third one feels as if many of the writers are writing to writing not writing to share their love of knitting.

I did it… I pulled out the Supersock, did a quick swatch, and cast on for the Dublin Bay socks. And now, after I got almost an inch of ribbing done last night, now I am thinking of ripping it out and using the Twisted German cast on.

I had not heard of this cast on until reading The Knitting Biologist‘s post today. The whole time I was knitting my ribbing last night, I kept thinking to myself that my cast on looked crappy (I used the knitted cast on instead of my usual cable cast on). It looks all loosey-goosey compared to the ribbing. I wanted an elastic cast on edge, not one that will fall down.

So, out it will come tonight. And I’ll get to try my hand at a new technique.

The Husband has gone out to dinner with people from work tonight. I fended for myself with Mu Shu chicken… tasty. I want to knit, but I don’t want to knit on either of the projects I currently have on the needles (The Third Incarnation and The Husband socks). What’s funny is I’m thinking of starting another pair of socks. I have a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Birches and a copy of the Dublin Bay socks….hmmm….

Okay… that was greatly disturbing. My brain was just derailed from normal thought by a commercial for the new Charmin wet wipes — “The cleaner clean.” The truely creepy part was the commercial showing someone putting toothpaste on the back of their hand then trying to wipe it off with regular tolietpaper…. *ugh*

Must go wash brain now…

There is something terribly wrong with a grown woman using the word “titty.”

That is all for now.

The hardest lesson for me to learn in the 3 years I’ve been knitting is that mistakes can be fixed. This isn’t carpentry or sewing where you have to measure twice because you can only cut once (well, you can cut twice but only to make something smaller). Knitting has the benefit that you can always go back and fix an error, if you choose to.

I think my reaction to finding a hole chewed in my completed Ribby Cardi sleeve shows how far I’ve come. Three years ago, I probably would have thrown it and the other pieces into the back of the closet and forgotten it. Instead, it only took me a few moments to consider how to approach the problem before tackling it. It then only took about 20 minutes total to fix.

I didn’t blink twice as I pulled out my cast-off and ripped back to the hole. Then I ripped back a few more rows to get a tail and to figure out where amongst the sleeve decreases I was. From there it was rather easy to attach new yarn and reknit the top of the sleeve. My wanting for a wearable sweater overrode my fear of mistakes (both making them and being unable to recover from them).

What’s funny is that, for a hard knitting lesson, this isn’t one you see in knitting books. Oh sure, they cover dropping down stitches to make fixes or even picking up dropped stitches. Knitters on lists and in their blogs talk about ripping back or frogging projects completely. But, coming to an understanding of the semifluid nature of knitting itself is rarely mentioned — yes, you’ve spent a large amount of time knitting an item, but it can be undone in a matter of minutes. I think this isn’t usually mentioned because knitters shy away from the idea that it can all be undone. Yet at the same time, being able to completely unravel means that mistakes don’t have as much impact. You can simply go back, fix the error, and continue onwards. Of course, knowing this is not embracing it…

but I think I’m getting closer…

Okay… *deep breath* …that’s better… nothing quite like having your neck adjusted. Always seems to make me feel more like myself. Now, if I could just get warm (my cube is freezing… a slight purple color can be seen under my finger nails, so I know I’m not imagining it), things would be good. *brrr*

I am hoping to finish the second Ribby Cardi sleeve tonight. If that happens, tomorrow (or tonight depending) I can rip out the top part of the first sleeve to fix the hole (stupid, freaking buggies).

This weekend will see the beginning of the über cleaning of the apartment starting with the living room and maybe even the hallway. The most important part will be vaccuming the furnature, since that hasn’t happened in a very long time, and along the baseboards. I need to swing by the hardware store tonight to pick up dust masks — I’m guessing I’m going to be kicking up a lot of it, and the last thing I need is to clean myself into an asthma attack. Yeah, I know… with asthma you’d think I’d dust more, but I’m lazy when it comes to housework. I’m hoping that by getting the apartment to a high level of cleanliness, it will be easier to keep it decent instead of where it is now… you can stop laughing now…

I also have plans to try to get to a place that sells better plastic storage solutions than I have now. The lids don’t fasten very tightly on my current storage bins, which defeats the purpose. For these plastic bins, I’m going to give a mixture of whole cloves, lavender, and cedar chips a try (although I’m also considering other things like southernwood, if I can find it… anyone have suggestions?). Even perfumed, the smell of the moth cake I got from my LYS owner turns my stomach and makes me feel sick for half an hour after I go into my fiber room for just a couple minutes (I’ve only done this twice and it was bad), so stuff that isn’t made from a big, long chemical name would probably be better for my home. And there’s the fact that my brother-in-law is planning on staying with us a week out of each month for work come the new year. The stuff I’ve got set up in the closet isn’t supposed to be used in rooms where people spend a lot of time.

Finally, don’t mess with librarians.

The hockey game last night was amazing. The Sharks beat the Blue Jackets 4 to 1. By the end of the game, the Sharks had put about 40 shots on net; almost made me feel bad for Denis (Columbus’s goalie). They dropped the 2003-2004 Pacific Division Champions banner at the beginning. Unfortunately, the downside of hockey games made itself known loud and clear this morning. I awoke with a pounding headache and the rest of me felt as if I’d been beat up all night. See, being around thousands of screaming people with loud music and such sucks the life out of me through a Pearl Tea straw. It was fun… it was exciting… I’m exhausted.

Since I was at the hockey game last night, there’s no new knitting news and no new knitting pictures (I failed to bring a camera to opening night hockey after a season long lock-out, you expect me to actually take a picture of the shawl I’ve had finish for almost a month now?) I really don’t know what my problem is when it comes to taking pictures for my blog. Either I take them and it then takes forever to get around to uploading them, or I keep saying I need to take them and never do. *sigh*

The hockey game last night was amazing. The Sharks beat the Blue Jackets 4 to 1. By the end of the game, the Sharks had put about 40 shots on net; almost made me feel bad for Denis (Columbus’s goalie). They dropped the 2003-2004 Pacific Division Champions banner at the beginning. Unfortunately, the downside of hockey games made itself known loud and clear this morning. I awoke with a pounding headache and the rest of me felt as if I’d been beat up all night. See, being around thousands of screaming people with loud music and such sucks the life out of me through a Pearl Tea straw. It was fun… it was exciting… I’m exhausted.

Since I was at the hockey game last night, there’s no new knitting news and no new knitting pictures (I failed to bring a camera to opening night hockey after a season long lock-out, you expect me to actually take a picture of the shawl I’ve had finish for almost a month now?) I really don’t know what my problem is when it comes to taking pictures for my blog. Either I take them and it then takes forever to get around to uploading them, or I keep saying I need to take them and never do. *sigh*

As I was nearing what I believed to be the end of straight knitting on the second Ribby Cardi sleeve, I pulled out the previously finished one to compare. Since I was feeling giddy from the prospect that this sweater may actually be done before winter is over, I gave into the happy feeling and pulled the first finished sleeve on so as to admire it. This is when The Husband found The Hole. Yes, one of those beastly buggies apparently found my nicely finished sleeve and chomped a hole in it. So, once the second sleeve is finished, I will be ripping back the first sleeve to fix it. Thankfully, the hole is near the top of the sleeve, so I only have to rip out about 4 or 5 inches, figure out where I am amidst the raglan decreases, and go from there. *sigh*

Last night I drew up my cleaning plan. I listed off each room of the apartment and what I felt needed to be done in order to bring the apartment up to cleanliness standards in which carpet beetles will be repulsed. I think I will be beginning with the living room, since that is where the first sleeve had been residing (it got shoved down behind one of the couch cushions, and there meet its fate… I think… cause it hasn’t ever been into the fiber room… meanwhile I’m trying not to think to hard about creepy, crawly buggies living in my couch). First, I will clean up the clutter. Then, I will vaccum the carpet and the furnature like a black hole has come to live in my living room. I am considering getting something that kills buggies but is less toxic than the stuff I have unleashed in the fiber room… I don’t know that it would help though.

As Stephanie has instructed, I have been trying to research carpet beetles so that I may know my enemy. Aside from using poisons and good housekeeping, there doesn’t seem to be much you can do about carpet beetles… they just are… they’re just everywhere. The good housekeeping seems to be key… carpet beetles are attracted to lint, hair, wool, animal protein kind of stuff (it was interesting to find out that they are a huge problem in museums because they like to munch on insect exhibits, which makes sense when you find out that carpet beetles tend to lay eggs in old spider webs and wasp nests because the larvae eat the dead bugs left behind). Okay, I need to stop thinking about buggies now… for some reason whenever I read up on bugs and such it makes me feel itchy everywhere… creepy crawly… *ugh*

Sunday started like most other Sundays… get up, have breakfast and tea, and decide what to do with the day. This Sunday The Husband and I were going to go to Macy’s to look at watches for him, head to Target to get me new workout clothes, and come home by way of Safeway to get whole wheat egg noodles. But this Sunday had other plans…

I went into my fiber room to put away my newest yarn acquisition (two skeins of Cherry Tree Hill Possum Lace in Blueberry Hill and a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Birches) in my fiber room. I don’t know what made me go across the room and fuss with the two test skeins (from two fo my fleeces) that were sitting atop the bookcase in front of the window, but I did… and I am glad I did…

I picked up the small white skein I made to sample my Southdown Babydoll fleece… foddled it a little… turned it over… WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

There was a bug… on my wool! Sonofabitch! (Insert a lot more cursing here.)

I quickly check the other wooly items sitting inches away from this one… no other buggies. I could only think of removing the buggie from my fiber room, so I took it to the kitchen. Thinking only the worst, I prepared a destroy the small skein while mentally running through the work ahead of me. The Husband smooshed the buggie (it fell off of the skein and I wanted to make sure it died), and applied some lamp oil to the wool, which was then taken outside and set alight in the firepit. Boy, did it burn…

By now I was started to feel sick to my stomach… a buggie in my stash… I began to prepare myself mentally for the idea of having to throw out wool… my wool. No wonder I felt sick to my stomach.

We still had errands to run, but The Husband suggested we make a stop at Home Depot where my LYS owner works to see if she was still there. We found her in her dept and she said she’d be with us as soon as she was done with a customer. She comes over and asks what’s up. I answer, “I found something eating my wool.” And here is why I love my LYS owner… she looked properly horrified, then proceeded to ask me what it looked like. A tiny, fuzzy buggie. Without missing a beat she informs me it’s a carpet beetle. She then starts going through what I need to do… go home, check everything, see any buggies — kill them. She mentioned freezing, but we have a very small freezer (we’re now looking at getting a small chest freezer for yarn and food). She then tells us we should be able to find no-pest strips at OSH, and asks if we can meet her at the yarn store in about an hour; she has mothcakes that don’t smell too bad, and they’re good for carpet beetles, too.

I got through most of my stash Sunday night, and put the perfumed mothcake in place as well as the no-pest strip. No buggies were found in my yarn, and my fleeces look alright as well. I did find 2 cast skins (carpet beetle larva molt) — one in a box of rug yarn and one on a wool sweater that was hanging in the closet (although I couldn’t find any holes). I’ve only seen (I think) 2 live larvae in the whole apartment — the one eating my wool, and one in our bedroom a few weeks before.

I think what I found is a Varied Carpet Beetle (the picture at this site looks almost exactly like what I found… when I said fuzzy, I meant it). Thankfully, I also think that since I only found the one, I don’t have to worry about an infestation at this point. I am going to check my stash again in a few weeks to make sure. I’m definitely going to have to get more serious about the vaccuming though.

And since I wasn’t on edge enough already, I saw a moth in my fiber room last night when I was finishing up with the last of my fleeces… smooshed that sucker real good, but unfortunately, I didn’t get a good look at him. I’m not sure if he flew in from the other room or if he flew out of the plastic bag I had just opened. So, that fleece has been put back in the bathroom, and will get checked again in a week.

Just thinking about all this… I could use a hard drink…