Monday, January 13, 2014

Moths

If your weekends are anything like mine, then you spent them walking your four year old around to various errands, like shopping at the coop or the farmer's market in the pouring rain (Flood warning? Really?) and (lest you think it's all glamour here) darning. Because, you see, I have a moth problem.

I've never had moths before. I feel contaminated, and with good reason. They didn't get my stash but they sure took a bite out of the winter clothes I had boxed at the beginning of the summer. This included one of my first sweaters. I was not pleased with this, to say the least. Not only was this sweater from way back in 2005-2006 close to my heart, it also involved unraveling a $4 man's sweater and piecing the uneven pieces together as I knit, then carefully blocking its touchy self on what was probably my bathroom floor. Basically, this was one of my super-involved projects, and only owning the sheep and whittling the needles would have made it more work.

A big bite
The accursed moths ate right through the left-hand pocket. 
Seriously, right through it!
I don't have extra yarn to fix this hole. For a while, I did; but I guess I can't be expected to move a ball of recycled yarn across the continental US more than once. I learned my lesson about that, to be sure.

I unraveled the afflicted pocket and set the yarn aside, then re-knit the pocket with some yarn left over from the FLAK sweater I never completed, which is just a solid brown. I could have used fuchsia for all it showed, since the sweater has hidden pockets that are sewn down on the inside of the sweater. I used the salvaged yarn to alternately knit and sew the hole closed.
Yes, I'm obsessive.

Below you can see the inside of the sweater with the newly-knit pocket bottom in place. It's not offensively different than its original state, thankfully.
I can live with it.
 But the important thing is the final result, which is tad wonky but passable:
The "patched" area is on the left. I didn't get the columns perfect, but I think after I reblock the sweater I won't particularly notice it, since it's a muddled looking yarn to begin with. And you can bet your multicolored knee socks that this sweater is going to be sealed in an air-tight container next summer.

And what did I do with the rest of my weekend, aside from drying out? Darned the socks that the moths attacked, too. The fun never stops around here at Casa Crisis.

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