Pestered

Yesterday was not a great day.  It started out nicely enough, with brilliant sunshine and modestly warm temperatures.  The rain has finally abated enough for me to wash, air dry, and store my winter jackets, and I took advantage of the relatively dry weekend weather to block the back of Thora.  Why not, I thought yesterday morning, block the Devonshire jacket on such a great drying day?  I had intended to rescue this from UFO purgatory and finish it as one of my NaKniSweMoDo projects.  All that was required was finishing the sleeves and doing the seams. 

But I blocked the fronts and back separately before, and they were not quite even.  So in reblocking, I hoped to make this modest adjustment and see if I couldn’t get the yarn to relax a bit in the horizontal direction.  After a bath in Kookaburra Woolwash, I proceeded to block it out—and also block the partial sleeve to verify the sleeve length (which is perfect).

This picture shows my progress.  There isn’t much light in room where I lay out my blocking pads, but the gloomy appearance matches my mood.

When I started to pin it out, I saw this, below the right armhole:

I am not at all sure I can fix the hole without ripping.  This is a slip-stitch pattern, and I don’t think I can manage it as a patch.  The ripping doesn’t bother me that much, but in order to reknit, I have to take the collar off (which took an evening to get on) and undo the shoulder bindoff.  That does bother me.  Luckily, I have lots of spare yarn for this project, so running out isn’t an issue as it might be on Thora.  And I am really angry at myself for being so casual with some of my yarn. 

I spent this morning searching online for moth repellents and those little traps that you can put in closets.  I will use the traps to see just how bad the infestation is, but I still think it is confined to my nightly knitting area and not my stash.  My stash yarn is all in plastic bags (Hefty zip tops are my plastic bags of choice), which are in plastic boxes with bars of Irish Spring soap.  I have found no problems in any of those boxes.  But in addition to checking every box again, and probably washing out the boxes and letting them air dry, I will be taking out all my clothes from all the closets, washing down the closets, and putting moth repellent everywhere.  Some of this is serious stuff, but I will use it in the spare room where I keep my yarn stash, and not anywhere near the birds or the rest of us.  I’ve also ordered lots of lavender Eucalan and Kookaburra Woolwash so I can wash every sweater I own before storing it again.  This is not how I planned to spend my summer vacation.

And to top it off, as I pulled out of the driveway on my way to the gym, where I hoped to work out my frustration by heaving heavy chunks of metal, I noticed that I had fewer mums than the day before.  This is a “guess what is missing” shot:

The answer is the flowers that formerly were at the top of the stems.  The deer discovered my mums much earlier than ever before.  I also planted Shasta daisies in a hard-to-plant bed, and they ate off my flowers there too. 

The plant is ok, as are the buds, but the pretty daisies that adorned it the day before are probably deer poop by now.  Ed replaced our netting around the bed, which seemed to work in past years.  When I researched plants that deer don’t like, Shasta daisies are always on the list.  As are rhubarb plants, which have toxic leaves.  The deer ate those too.  They also eat my rhododendrons, another plant on the standard list.  I think I need to post in some conspicuous place that list of plants that deer aren’t supposed to eat, so they can see it before chowing down and move on to someone else’s flowers.

Well, all I can say is that these pests have good taste.  The moths seem to go directly to my stash of Zara.  Now I intend to make them pay with their lives for that choice.

Comments

[Caroline M]

At least the deer are big enough to see. The hole could have been in a more conspicuous place and there could have been more than one but it's still not a good news story is it?

[Jenny]

Wow, you are getting pestered! I bought a tomato plant with two tomatoes already on it Lowe's, and the little bastard squirrels swiped both of them this week! They are SO not getting any peanuts this weekend! Ungrateful little terrorists.

[Dorothy]

How heartbreaking! Having been through the m**h problem myself I know how exasperating it is. We also have deer and last year they ate my most fragrant roses. Sigh.

[tiennie]

oh no oh no oh no! I hope you'll be able to fix it and that the pests stay away!

[Robin]

That is terrible!!! I would be especially upset about the slip stitch hole. Yuck. I guess I should be glad that the only pests I seem to have at the moment are rabbits. Everywhere I look, there's a rabbit nibbling on my flowers.

[Joan]

My deepest sympathy. Especially as regards the "m" word. The decontamination process kind of reminds me of the time my daughter came home with lice in her hair(I think I'd better go do some stash patrol)...

[Judy G.]

Sending sympathy...Never had that problem (touch wood). Maybe that's why some people only use acrylic???