Small victories

I broke the big toe on my right foot.  I broke the hell out of it.  The first doc who looked at my xrays said that it's "ugly".  So, I'm in a boot for a month while we wait to see if the chunk of bone I broke off reattaches itself or if I get a pin in my toe.  Because of this, my wool is still in disarray.  I only have 4 days left of winter break, so I think I'm going to fail, once again, at getting my yarn organized prior to going back to school.  At least it's not really my fault this time.

Because of my stupid foot, I can't work out like I planned, can't get to the eye doctor (probably not my foot's fault, but I'm sticking with the excuse), and can't get my house under control.  I can, however, type, so I finally wrote an article about spinning that I've been trying to put together for several years.  It's not much, but it's my small victory.

Freaking moths.

I'm still dealing with the drama of the moths.  Out of paranoia, I decided to empty the bedroom completely in order to make sure that every speck of dust was eradicated.  First, I packed up all of the yarn and wool.  Luckily, I'm not a complete slacker/idiot and I had two 30 gallon bins that were properly stored and therefore not affected.  All other yarn in the room was packed into trash bags and put on the back porch until I could deal with it.  I think I pulled about 50 lbs of wool out of the room.

At this point, I began freaking out.  The best way I knew of to kill moths was to do the freeze, thaw, repeat process, and my freezer is tiny.  If I wanted to keep ice and food in my freezer, it would take me months to treat all of this crap.    Fortunately, I turned to Ravelry where I was told that you can use dry ice to kill the evil little bugs. 

I bought a few more Rubbermaid tubs at Target and dry ice at the grocery store.  The article with the information on fumigation suggested that you need 1-1/2 lbs of dry ice to fumigate a 30 gallon bag of wool.  I started with 1/2 lb per 18 gallon tub of wool.  I wasn't able to find many reports of dry ice use from other knitters, so I was somewhat concerned that the wool might be damaged if it touched the ice.  I decided to put yarn that I'm not in love with directly on top of the ice just to be safe.

After a few hours, there didn't seem to be enough in the way of CO2, so I threw another 1/2 lb in each tub.  The ice wasn't melting much either.  I dragged all of the tubs into the living room so the ice would melt faster and duct tapped around the tubs to seal them better (the lids on these things suck more than I thought).

Then, on Wednesday, Mother Nature gave us a bit of a cold front.  The temperature dropped down to 10 below, so I put the tubs back outside just in case.  There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to moths.

I've began unpacking the wool this evening.  I planned to rewash everything in Kookaburra wool wash, but now I'm starting to rethink that.  Washing all of this wool is going to be a massive pain in the ass and it doesn't seem entirely necessary.  The wool wasn't harmed by the dry ice at all, so I think I'll be fine if I just start packing everything up into freezer bags.

Unfortunately, I won't know if this method was effective until some time has passed.  I'm going to be cautious with how the wool is packed and inspect it pretty regularly to make sure things still look ok.  If I'm still moth free in a few months, I guess it worked.  I really hope it does because the dry ice seems like the easiest way to deal with this much wool.

Reviving the blog/FRAKING MOTHS!!!!

Since I've converted to Facebook, I've somewhat abandoned blogging. Ok, I abandoned it altogether. Facebook just isn't the correct format for sharing more than a tidbit of information at a time, so I am reviving this blog. Be afraid, be very afraid.

And now, the drama of the m*ths.

So, I started the annual attempt to get the stash under control and I found evidence of moths. OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!! I live in freaking COLORADO!!!!!! We don't have a major moth issue here. I've never even seen moth eaten garments! I've even been extra careful and stored my wool with cedar chips and lavender. But still, FREAKING MOTHS!!!!!!!

Luckily, the moths only seem to have damaged a small portion of my unspun wool, most of which sould be salvageable. Unfortunately, I appear to have 60+ lbs of wool and yarn in my bedroom alone which I must now quarantine and deal with. Add to that the epic sty that my bedroom is, and we have a serious issue.

All wool and yarn is getting bagged and put on the back porch. All cloths, books, and random crap must be removed. Everything must be washed. Everything must be vacuumed. I'm panicked and overwhelmed.

Of course, my loving husband thought I was completely overreacting until I informed him that his Doctor Who scarf is made of wool and, therefore, in danger. "They can't have my scarf!" he said. "I love it more than anything else in this room. Well, except you." Now he shares my horror. He has come to the dark side. MUAHAHAHA!!!

I never thought I would be hoping for some seriously cold weather, but I could really use some right now. If I could use my back porch as a freezer, that would seriously speed up the de-mothing process. This is going to be a royal pain in the arse. Wish me luck.

Doin' the happy FO dance!

I finished the replacement kitty hat today. I'm happy with how it turned out, not that it's a very challenging pattern or anything. The first kitty hat (seen on your right) had a very good life. It went to college in New York for 3 years, and even visited Ireland for a few months, but it has seen the end of it's days. Well, the end of it's days as my sister's hat since she washed it and it's about the right size for a six year old child. Not that she didn't continue to wear it, it just looked pretty silly. When I was out there in November, she was wearing the poor old kitty had around, and it doesn't even cover her ears now.

Fortunately, I had 3 more skeins of kitty hat yarn in my stash, so I was able to kint a replacement for my sis. I'm a much better knitter now, so I think it turned out better. I had to modify it a bit, but I think it's better than the original. I think my sis is going to give the original kitty hat to one of the elementary school kids that she reads to every week. They are in 3rd grade, so the shrunken hat should fit perfectly.

My sister looks totally thrilled about the hat, I know, but she really does dig it. We are just the opposite of photogenic most of the time. That and very very sarcastic.

The pattern I used for this hat can be found at http://www.kittyville.com/knit/kitty_hat.html

Modifications (that I remember):
Used Mauch Chunky yarn on size 8 needles
CO 72 stiches (so it was aprox 18" around rather than 22" or whatever)
Pick up 14 stiches rather than 12 for the ears because everyone thought they were too small
Forget the pom-poms because I'm lazy and I don't think the first one had them

Changes I would make in the next one: I think the ears could be double knit so they stand up better. Maybe decrease the ear flap CO along with the original CO because the ear flaps are friggin' huge!

And I just remembered that I left a stitch marker in the darn thing. I wonder how long it will be in there before she notices? It kind of blends in, so it could be a while.... maybe I won't say anything just to see if it's still there at graduation.

New years resolutions

I never do this, but I feel the need to make some resolutions for 2009. Here goes nothing:

In 2009, I resolve to:
1. Spend less time on Warcraft than I do on wool related activities or school. This means I probably ought to keep it under 20 hours a week. (The fact that I'm trying to limit myself to 20 hours a week is pretty darn sad, but we'll address this at a later date)
2. Keep the stash organized. No more leaving half finished projects in the living room if they aren't actively being worked on. No more wool in the dining room. No more wool in the kitchen unless it's in the process of being dyed.
3. Photograph my work,. Seriously, how the heck am I supposed to sell things if I don't photograph them? This is just plain lazy.
4. Sell the Ashford and the mystery wheel. I haven't spun on the Ashford in over a year, and I've never spun on the mystery wheel. They must go.
5. Cull the stash. It's out of control and currently dominates the bedroom. If I've had it a year and I haven't spun it yet, it needs to go.

6. Work on my fake hair business. I'm talented with the whole fake hair thing (seriously, here's me with green hair) and I really need to focus more on it. I love making hair, and it's why I started spinning in the first place.

Ok, I think this is a pretty good start, now for some WoW ;-)

A fleece is a learning experiance

I bought a beautiful CVM fleece at the Estes Park Wool Market. The fleece is absolutly gorgeous. It came from a 2 year old ram who was coated. The fleece didn't really smell bad at all and was very clean, so I figured it would be easy to wash (unlike my last targhee fleece). I noticed that there were some second cuts when I picked it, but it didn't look too bad to me, and the wool was so nice I figured I could deal. Turns out that there were a lot. That's where this fleece's lesson was learned:

Pick out the second cuts before washing or dying. It's a pain, but do it anyway because it sucks less than trying to pick them out after washing. I seriously just spent roughly 4 hours flick carding CVM locks to get the neps out. I only made it through like 8oz of fiber. The fiber is so soft that I don't want to spin anything else, but still, major pain in the ass. The hour spent digging through sticky fleece to pull out the second cuts is a much better use of time.

LYS Review - Posh, A Yarn Boutique

I was in Posh today, and I thought I should offer up a review for others who may not have made it over there. I was never in the old location, but I've been in the new one a couple of times. It's a reasonable drive from my office, so I head over there for some lunch hour retail therapy every so often.

The store is located on Tennyson street in the cute redeveloped arts district. The store is on the east side of the street. The signage isn't all that great, so you kind of have to know where you are going, but it's next door to a yoga place, if that helps any.

The shop is kind of small, but they make good use of the space they have. They also carry a limited supply of roving for us spinning types (this is where I found my new spinning obsession: Fleece Artist Silk/Merino Silver. OMG YUM). The selection isn't uber or anything, but I've been able to find yarn for every project I've had in mind so far. They also have a lot of samples around, which are super inspiring (Gods, I wish I could knit faster).

The owner of the shop is a lady named Sylvia. She's super nice and helpful. Each time I've been in there, she's been totally willing to pull books to look up patterns, or even hop on Ravelry to check out a yarn requirement. She seems to have found that perfect balance that we all search for in yarn shop service; helpful but not in your face; permissive of yarn fondling but not too aloof; etc. The prices in the store are also very reasonable. I've really only comparison shopped on the roving, but the prices were very comparable to what you find online.

All in all, I would have to say that Posh is a great little store. So great, in fact, that I drove about 10 miles out of my way just to buy yarn from Sylvia today. :) If you live in or near Denver and haven't visited yet, you really should.

And so, I leave you with some things I've spun from the roving I bought at Posh:

Aprox 40 wpi silk/merino singles

Navajo Plied silk/merino