The sound of silence

I've been gone for quite a while huh? Mostly it's because all my yarn was in a -80C freezer until Wednesday, but it's also because I've been away on the annual student retreat and then caught a stinker of a cold as soon as I got back. None of which is really conducive to knitting.

But I cracked last weekend, a week and half without touching yarn was just too long and even though I knew I'd be getting my entire stash back in just a couple if days, I thought a trip to Knitty City was in order.

Yum, ultra alpaca in peat mix! Ever since I knitted a scarf out of this forever and a day ago I've wanted to make something for myself out of it. (Incidentally, about a year after I gifted that scarf the recipient finally owned up to having lost it a couple of months after I gave it to him. Loser.) So temporarily loosing all my yarn to bed bugs gave me the prefect excuse opportunity to get myself set up with a new project, Kaino by Norah Gaughan. Unfortunately the dark colour of the yarn, combined with my camera's inability to capture green, plus overcast skies and well, snot, means I haven't been able to tkae a decent picture. There's a terrible one on ravelry but I'm hoping to replace it with something a bit more green and in focus soon. I'm past the armhole decreases on the back and with my current start of snot-production I should be onto the fronts soon....

Aw crap.

So you know how I said I needed to slow down a little? Well Mother Nature sure has taken care of that.

About a week ago my housemate starting getting hives all up her arm, her neck and across her face. Then I got a couple...

I showed them around lab and some wise person said, "You know, they look like bed bug bites." This got me thinking, what do bed bugs look like? A quick perusal on google very swiftly let me know that the "beetle" I squashed last week on the couch was in fact an adult Cimex lectularius.

Ho-ly SHIT.

All hell has broken loose in my apartment. Everything that could be laundered was washed and dried on hot in one evening, then has been sealed in garbage bags. Everything that couldn't be laundered has been bagged up and is awaiting dry cleaning, freezing or napalm. (Turns out I'm a pretty good liar and managed to persuade lab safety to loan "our lab" a -80C freezer for two weeks so that all the yarn and sweaters and teddy bears can be frozen solid.) Literally everything I own that is not furniture is currently in a plastic bag. I shit you not.

I think the couch was the epicenter of the infestation (it's the only place I was ever bitten and the only place we and the exterminator found bugs) and it has been disposed of. As has the armchair that was next to it. Everything has been sprayed with pesticide and will be sprayed again on Monday and quite possibly again a week after that. I've ordered encasements for the beds so that if there are bugs in there they can't get out and any stragglers from the couch wont be able to make their way in. I'm going to buy new pillows.

Just in case the person who is my Sit n' Knit Neck Warmer Swap recipient is reading this, your cowl was the first thing to be ziplock-ed and put in my freezer. It'll soon be moved to the -80. I'm trying my hardest not to spread the love.

So yeah. I have no yarn, one pair of shoes and seven days worth of clothes in a garbage bag. Housing put me up in "guest accommodation" which was infested with cockroaches. I hightailed it out of there as soon as one crawled across me while I was watching TV. The front desk gave me keys to the "emergency accommodation" which was thankfully free of obvious bugs.

I feel like a bag lady and a leper and the pied piper of bugs all rolled into one.Check your luggage folks, this is not fun.

I really should make an effort to slow down.

Well that didn't take long! I like it, can you tell?

Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf from knitty Spring '08.
Yarn & Needles: Fleece Artist merino 2/6 in a beautiful semi-solid red. The needles were a little odd, 3.5mm Perl-Inox which narrow to about 2mm 2" from the tip. I don't know if all Perl-Inoxes are like that, but I have two pairs that I inherited from my mom's collection that do the same thing. It makes moving the stitches around really easy though so maybe that's why they do it...

Lace Ribbon Scarf

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but with 23 grams out of 115 left and 3.5mm needles I'm not so sure. It's beautiful yarn that I knew wouldn't be destined for feet, and I'm sure I'll love it when it's done but wow, it's a lot of knitting!