Unlucky in Bugs

Seeing as skeins of yarn are like little condos for bed bugs, and seeing how knitters love 100% wool yarn for the same properties that make it such a pain in the ass to clean, bed bugs are truly a knitter’s worst nightmare. Even if you don’t have bed bugs, skip down to the bottom of this post to see my recommendations for bed bug-free knitting.

I had four or five knitting projects in the works when I found Señor Bug on my bed, plus a healthy stash of yarn. My completed projects mostly survived my pre-treatment cleaning: I took two wool scarves and a wool shrug to the dry cleaners, washed my cotton and blended scarves with the rest of my laundry, and a blended hat turned out ok.

The dry cleaner I went to wouldn’t take hats, though, so I tried washing a 100% wool cap and a superwash wool beret with my laundry and although they didn’t felt, they both came out a little funky. I wonder if I can reblock them when this is all over, but I’m doubtful.

As far as WIPs (works in progress) and stash go, I tried washing a small amount of 100% cotton yarn in a mesh bag. It’s fine, but it still felt damp when I took it from the washer, so now I’m scared to take it out of its Ziploc bag.

I had done a small project in a wool blend that I was planning on unraveling, but hadn’t yet, so I cut it off from the skein with a long tail, threw out the skein and washed the project, and it worked. So I was able to salvage a little of that yarn.

I threw out a half of skein of 100% wool, several balls in my stash that were really small, one almost entire skein of an ugly yarn I wasn’t really going to use, and I absolutely must throw out a skein (with a 15% finished project attached) of dark gray fingering weight wool that I got at a farmer’s market in San Francisco, but can’t seem to part with just yet.

The biggest heart-wrencher is a 60% completed shrug in 100% wool. I bound off where I was today and took it to the dry cleaners, but got a no. I will try another dry cleaners in Manhattan, but if they say no too I will have to toss it. All that work! Sigh.

Bed Bug-Free Knitting:

I am starting to think about how I will continue to knit while undergoing treatment. It seems as if wool and cotton blends will be my friends. I think I will bring Ziploc bags to the store so I can secure them in plastic right away. Small and medium projects should fit snugly in gallon Ziploc bags, and I can just knit on the train or in a cafe and keep them in plastic while in the house. Then, when completed, I can wash on hot and dry on high with my laundry and that’s that!