I never reported on the solarization experiment.

My car never got hot enough (I never thought I'd regret having tinted windows!) but I set the bags out on my lawn in the late-afternoon sun. The candy thermometer I put in one bag had reached 150* F in a couple hours, so I'm guessing any buggos are dead.

And I did something I should have done a long time ago:



Those are the shawls. I also have a box for my cardigans, one for my pullovers, one for vests, one for the big bulky sweaters, and one for "accessories" (hats, scarves, gloves). Instead of leaving them out on open shelves to get dusty or munched, they're going to stay in these boxes when I'm not wearing them. Also, if the problem does redevelop, it will be contained.

And I think it's a lot less than I thought. I think I found "patient zero" and have quarantined it (found pupa cases in a ball of wool) and from what I've seen, there's really very little damage. And I could have seen a sum total of as few as three moths (I killed three; I've seen moths on five separate occasions but twice they escaped before I could kill them). So I'm hopeful it's not as horrible as I thought.

I am working on one skein that looks like it took some damage - a laceweight merino/cashmere blend (Interestingly, all the damaged wool I've found has been merino. Coincidence? Or attraction on the part of the critters? Some of it has been superwash and some not, so superwash-status is no protection). I tried winding it off on the swift but the skein was so tangled that I kept breaking it. So I took it off and am slowly winding it by hand - it's very, very tangled, and I had a few bad moments where I almost threw it out. But my frugal and patient nature won out and I'm finding that there's really very little damage and it was only in the first 20 yards or so. So I can still use it. (it was originally purchased to make the River Shawl, and I was telling myself at some points, "Oh, just pitch it, and order a more water-like color from the yarns at KnitPicks." [the wool I have is a pale green]. But then, I told myself: your yarn budget for the next couple months went to the Salvation Army, remember? So I kept winding.)

Actually, winding it off last night was a good meditative exercise after a sad and stressful week. It was, in its way, almost like walking a labyrinth.

Oh, I'm by no means done with the skein and I have a second (which I think I will put up on the swift and use the swift to help me untangle as I hand-wind - I think it was the ball-winder that was contributing to the breakage). But I'm far enough into the project now so that I don't want to abandon it.

At any rate, what I said is true: I'm not going to buy any more yarn for the next couple months. Until my mid-fall break, at which point I'm going to perhaps make a pilgrimage to the yarn shop in Longview again. I'm going to work on stash, to remind myself that I have "enough." Because, I really do. More than "enough."

I also ran across the bulky-weight alpaca blend that I originally bought to make a variant of the Salt Peanuts cardigan. I do not think I will use it for that; it's probably too heavy a yarn. But it's a deep, turquoise blue, a color that feeds my soul, and I'm thinking perhaps my NEXT sweater project will be some sort of a cardigan out of the bulky weight alpaca. Just because the blue sort of took my breath away when I dug down to it in the stash - somehow I had forgot it being so bright and warm and clear. It's funny how colors do that to me - a color will grab me at first, then I'll either grow tired of it or grow complacent about it, and then I'll look at it again, and maybe it's my mood at the time or something, but I catch my breath a little because I remember how beautiful the color is.

Even though it's definitely a winter-weight yarn (mostly alpaca and bulky), it makes me think of the sky on the loveliest spring day I can remember - except it's a lot deeper and more intense than that. It makes me think, specifically, of sitting on the top of Bromide Hill at Chickasaw National Recreation Area (which is, for my money, one of the most beautiful places within 100 miles of me) and looking out over the landscape, and looking up at the sky, and smelling the scent of the cedar trees that is carried by the wind, and being able to see the whole park spread out before you, and hear the wind and the cry of a distant hawk - and it's just about the loveliest place in the world to be, on an April day when it's just first starting to get warm and sunny again.

it's funny how the yarn makes me think of that. It's almost like that guy in that show who sees into people's futures when he touches them - I can look at a yarn and be transported to another place solely by its color.

(Yes, I know, that's that potentially dangerous daydreaming again. But what the hell. I'd rather live with my faculties, including daydreaming, to the age of 75 or so than live to be 100 by existing as some kind of humorless, dreamless automaton.)