I have a big popcorn barrel thing that belonged to Brian. He never ever used it because if you were making popcorn at our house, it wasn't big enough. We used this giant bread bowl, that I used to mix up 10 to 12 loaves of bread at a time for a popcorn bowl.
I recall one time we had company over to watch a movie. I pulled out the popcorn jar, a large 5 litres jar, recovered from my restaurant days. My kitchen compatriot started laughing almost uncontrollably. The gentlemen came from the living room to find out what she found so funny. And then I took out the bowl.
They had never seen so much popcorn in one sitting in their life, but like all popcorn in our house, before you could blink, the bowl was empty. Anyway, a namby pamby pop like the pot of popcorn you buy at a theatre was never going to cut it.
So that popcorn pot was used for some kitchen knitting. Till he died, that kitchen knitting stayed in the kitchen. It was large enough to hold a small project, needles, yarn, and pattern and even the pen so I had no excuse not to mark off where I was on the pattern. Since then that goofy pot has been hauled around with me and has graced my book case right along with my books and whatever else was on those shelves and it has always been stored open. That pot became a sort of memory of popcorn times, such good silly sweet memories. It just always came with me, stored open.
And that is where my tale of woe and stupidity begins. It was in my room, stored open, during the great moth event that started with my swatch board. I checked the knitting in the pot every once in a while, and it always appeared in good condition. When I moved here that pot of knitting sat on a shelf in my study, again always open, being shifted and moved as shelf space warranted.
But I haven't worried too much about moths here. Number one, all my floors are hard surface, a bit of laminate but mostly vinyl flooring. It is so much easier to keep dust free and clean and I became a little complacent. There was a point in fall where I was caught several moths in the pheromone traps, but I traced that to a large metal vase that was tucked into Keith's closet. It had an old woolen hat of Brian's in it. Once I got rid of that hat and cleaned up everything, we were once again, moth free.
I have been thinking of my pot and my kitchen knitting as I am working on this colourwork sweater. I was thinking it might be fun to do a post on big and little colourwork and how the big project, the sweater, was actually the little colourwork project and how my kitchen knitting, a small pair of mittens, was a huge colourwork undertaking.
So I merrily pulled out the popcorn pot and pulled off a doily that had been tossed on top and pulled out the knitting.
It wasn't attached to the yarn balls.
You know how sometimes when a thing is so surprising that it is hard to take in, and how you kind of sit there bemused for a moment before the realisation of just what is going on has hit you. Yeah.
It was only seconds till I realised that my kitchen knitting had indeed come under attack somewhere along the lines. I haven't seen moths for months but at some point, there was activity there. I pulled out the needles, and took yarn and mitten cuff and tossed them in the oven to bake for a while. After a morning baking, I tossed them in the freezer for a couple hours. That sudden shock of temperature change is as important as any other technique to make sure you have a good kill.
My kitchen project was a pair of Deep in the Forest Mittens by Tuulia Salmela that I started in January of 2012. So much was going on at that point in our lives. Brian had just had his first knee surgery and that spring I started working a full time mat leave temp job that took me through to the our last spring. I made pretty good progress through that summer and fall. The project was set aside what with everything else, including my dear Sweet Thing, Cassandra being born, but I always meant to finish it. It always remained on my radar and was never very far from my thoughts.
I am going to wind the now bug free balls of yarn on my ball winder to see what the damage is on the yarn balls themselves. Steady tension between the swift and winder and keeping a hand running along the fibres should help me assess whether the yarn is salvageable. If it is, I will restart someday, probably with this same yarn. If not, well, I have plenty of other yarn.
One thing I am sure of. I won't be so careless again, not even in this hard floored house that generally stays cleaner than any place else I have lived in before. Everything in secure storage. Everything.
But that is my tale of woe for you today, woe and popcorn and sweet memories because of it all. But not sweet memories of the moths. No I pretty much hate the moths.
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