I went to get a portion of my new gray alpaca fleece, and when I opened the bag, the fibers were crawling with little white moths. Ugh. I immediately took the bag outside, then checked my other bags of fiber. It seems that the infestation is currently only in the one bag.
Clothes moth in alpaca fiber
This is my first experience with a clothes moths infestation, so I did some internet research (I know, internet knowledge, but I read several articles and went to a few different websites). I decided the freeze method was the best route for me, mainly because I have freezer space and don’t want to use chemicals. I put the whole bag in my deep freeze and the plan is to leave it in there for at least two weeks. When I’m up to it, I will take it out of the freezer and wash the lot of it (so it may be longer than two weeks, that is a big job). But I’m all creepy crawly now and concerned for the rest of my fiber stash.
I planted paperwhite in September in the hopes of holiday blooms. Some have decided to bloom now, while others are holding on. Maybe I wasn’t consistent with planting depth. Hm. Still, it is nice to see the delicate white flowers in the front garden.
Paperwhites in bloom in November
The Japanese Honeysuckle is putting out an occasional burst of blooms.
Japanese Honeysuckle in bloom in November
The Shasta daisy also has a handful of flowers to show off.
Well hello there little guy. I don’t suppose I will have occasion to get a picture from this angle very often, so I’m going to snap a shot, OK? Then I’m giving you warning that I’m opening the door to let the dogs out. Don’t run towards the door jam, it is squished death for spiders and geckos, but I promise I will check before I close the door since you were so kind as to let me capture your image this morning. Nice eyelashes, by the way. Very chic.
High Eyelashed Jumping Spider on the other side of the glass
In the pursuit of a möbius scarf that has a center line that stretches with the fabric, I have twisted my brain inside out, backwards, and forwards. I finally sat down and drew what I wanted.
Tessellated parallelograms
I used different colored lines to trace how the crochet stitches should go.
Breaking up the tessellation into crochet-able lines
With a little experiment to verify my thought process, I then used crochet symbols over the sketch to solidify the plan.
Capturing the essence of the pattern with crochet symbols
The foundation chain is not strictly a chain, but a connected series of loops. Most crochet patterns start with “chain x number”, but not this one. I only illustrated a single repeat for the subsequent rows, as that is all you need. Each row is offset from the previous row. I’m not going to give a specific pattern for a specific size or number of rows, but I will attempt to put into words what my drawing shows, for those that may need it.
quadruple double crochet (qdc): yarn over 5 times, insert hook into work, (yarn over, pull through two loops) six times
Treble crochet (tr): yarn over 2 times, insert hook into work, (yarn over, pull through two loops) three times
Foundation chain (row 1): chain 8, *quadruple double crochet (qdc) into the fifth stitch from the hook, chain 11, repeat from * to desired length, qdc, chain 3, join with a slip stitch to beginning chain.
Row 2 (and all subsequent rows): chain 6, mark third chain, slip stich in 5 chain loop, * chain 3, tr into middle of six chain length, chain 5, tr into same stitch, ch 3, repeat from *. Chain 3, tr, chain 5, join with slip stitch at mark, 3 slip stitches to get to next starting point.
To make this Möbius, when you come round to the mark, give the foundation chain a slight twist and crochet on the opposite side. Each round will go on both sides of the work (the magic of Möbius).
Wrist-sized test pieceWrist sized test piece showing the twist
