The Washing of the Sweaters

It's the end of daylight savings time and the weather has gotten cooler. I have begun the fall edition of washing all my sweaters. This house and the last house I lived in both have carpet beetles, so I try to keep a close eye on things. Although I escort nearly all bugs and spiders out of the house, these little critters I squish. Mostly what I find are the larvae or larval skins. I rarely find adults. The larvae are voracious eaters of wool, skin, hair and even leather. The adults just hang out on the window sill, as far as I can tell. I have found larvae on the bathroom counter, on sweaters (next to holes they ate), on the carpet, on the bedspread and on the walls. I have, of course, found them occasionally in my yarn and fiber stash. That's part of the reason why I keep it sealed in big plastic bins rather than on shelves out in the open. I try as much as I can to deny access to the munchies.

So the cotton sweaters went in the washing machine yesterday and I handwashed about half of the wool and mohair sweaters. Later this week I'll wash the other half of the sweaters, then put them all back. It also gives me a chance to go over everything and check for pulled threads, missing buttons, and other minor repair issues.

Minor Knitting Action
I did finish a repeat of the Kiri yesterday (three and a half rows). I will knit three more repeats and call it quits. I keep thinking I can knit a whole repeat in an evening, but at the bottom edge of the shawl it takes a while to knit a row. I haven't gotten around to counting the stitches yet. Part of me wants to know and part of me doesn't want to know. I thought about knitting away the day today, but I brought some work home with me and really need to do that instead. I also need to finish baking cookies for Twitchh and the SCinet fiber team. Set-up for the SuperComputing conference, SC07, starts tomorrow morning.

Maybe this evening I can get back to the Kiri....