It looks like we might hit our first freeze later this week. As the weather cools in Atlanta, thoughts turn to unfinished sweaters.
There's a beautiful Bohus Forest Darkness that has been hibernating for awhile
in my unfinished objects. According to my Ravelry notes, I started the sweater
in the spring of 2015. The colorwork progressed nicely. The problem was when I
got to the plain part. I worked the directions for the smallest size and
discovered the smallest size is too big for me. I ripped back to the colorwork
— thank goodness I put in a dental floss lifeline — and plopped the project
back into a Longaberger picnic basket. I determined in order to finish the
sweater, I would probably need a mannequin sized to my own body, so I could
adjust fit as I knit. At one point Jenna from The Whole Nine Yarns helped me
make a mannequin from an old t-shirt and duct tape. After my Aunt Carol passed
away last year. I acquired her adjustable sewing mannequin. So the Universe
seemed to be nudging me back towards this project.
I got out the sweater-in-progress to put it on the mannequin. After all, if I can just figure out how to get down through the shoulders to the split for the sleeves and body, I can enjoy rounds and rounds of mindless stockinette. The sweater could be complete and warming me regularly. And what did I discover?
I had treated the picnic basket with lemon oil. But over time, the scent had
worn off. And a moth had found the sweater. Dang! Really?! The rotten pesky
no-good insect couldn't even wait until the sweater was complete? Let's just
state for the record that eating holes in an incomplete sweater is going too
far. This is the moth equivalent of a declaration of war.
Sigh.
First order of business — be sure the moth(s) is(are) gone. Fortunately, I have a new Speed Queen washer and dryer. My washer died back in the summer. The previous washer and dryer had been purchased in 1998, when we bought our house. I've know for awhile a new washer and dryer would be in the nearer rather than farther future. I bought the sweater rack for the dryer. It is an optional accessory, probably because most people don't need it. But you, fine knitter extraordinaire, will find it to be useful, indeed!
My particular dryer has heat settings of low, medium, and high corresponding
to 120°F/49°C, 140°F/60°C, and 160°F/71°C. (A thank-you to the kind customer
service people at Speed Queen who answered my question about this, as the
numbers corresponding to the settings are not in the documentation.) Since
moths don't do well in high heat, I set my colorwork collar and the balls of
unused yarn on the dryer rack and cranked the dryer up to high heat for one
hour. After the items cooled, I put them in plastic. Yes, yes, I know some of
you are thinking, "Don't put yarn in plastic. It can't breathe." True enough.
Yarn that still has moisture in it can have problems inside plastic. But if
the yarn has very little water in it — because it has been gently heated or because
the overall climate has low humidity — you can improve your chances of
everything going as desired. Which risk do you take, insects or microbes?
As an aside, if you have a dryer rack, you can dry hand-washed knitted items.
A wool sweater isn't going to felt if it isn't moving. Felting requires
motion. You might speed up the blocking of an item by setting it and the
pinning board on the rack. When I've frogged my knitting and washed the skein to reset it, I've had luck drying the skein on the dryer rack. A dryer with a rack is essentially a very low-heat
oven. I suspect there are many interesting ways to exploit this
technology in your crafting practice, none of which are recommended by the dryer's manufacturer.
I finally found a morning when I felt ready to tackle the challenge of mending the hole. The yarn for the Bohus sweater is lovely. The wool-angora blend tends to stick just enough to itself. This comes as a kit. I have a few precious grams remaining of each color. The hole was over about five rows of color 303 (the green in the lower left, next to the quarter). Interestingly, the moth seemed only interested in that color. For all I know, it could be that something had gotten on the yarn to make just that one little spot tasty. The mend involved duplicate stitch in both purls and knits. And because this involved colorwork, there were places where I could fix a stitch, and then needed to run the mending yarn behind a couple stitches in a different color before I could mend the next stitch. I spread the mend over about three pattern repeats. I do not want this to come out. And there was at least one increase in the affected area.
The final mend isn't perfect, but it is pretty good. You can tell the purl
bumps have two strands not one. On the other hand, blocking may improve this
as well as felting and fulling as the sweater is worn. Right now, all I have
is the colorwork, and it is radially symmetrical. The short rows for the back
of the sweater come after the colorwork. I ought to be able to rotate the
colorwork to put the mended area to the back of the sweater.
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