BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

What a weekend it was. Babies were born. Friends came to visit. And, on Saturday, the dear boy damn near set the apartment on fire. I know you’re all on the edges of your respective seats by now, so I’ll give you the rundown.

We have a garret apartment in a large, Victorian house. This means that we are tucked right up under the eaves and, towards the edges of the apartment, the ceilings slope down very sharply to meet the walls. To take maximum advantage of the apartment’s space, many of the areas where the slope makes for spaces too low to stand in have been turned into closets. I use one of these, fitted with a clothes bar and a single shelf, for my clothes. I hang work clothes on the bar; I stack folded sweaters on the shelf.

This closet has a bare light bulb installed on one side wall, about two inches above the shelf. Why, I do not know. The closet is not so large, or so deep, or so dark that it really requires a light source. Also, the location of this bulb is awkward, so near the shelf. To keep it clear would sacrifice a lot of storage. So, when moving in, I decided not to use the light, but to stack sweaters over the entire length of the shelf. Tragically, however, I never removed the bulb.

And now, we come to the events of this weekend. A very close friend of the dear boy’s gave birth to her first child on Friday morning. He, being very excited about the whole event, had been spending a great deal of time at the hospital with mother and child. Finally, completely worn out, he stopped by the apartment on Saturday to shower, change, and take a quick nap. For some reason, possibly because he was so tired, he thought that some article of his, I have yet to determine exactly what, was in my closet. So, he turned on the light and looked around. Not finding it, he left to return to the hospital. The light, however, stayed on.

Three hours later, I returned from some errands to a god awful stench and two deeply disturbed cats. After running around the apartment madly, trying to determine the source of this odor, the cats and I tracked it to the closet, and the bulb. Two thick, wool sweaters had large, light-bulb shaped holes burned completely through them. Very upsetting. Luckily, they were not hand knitted sweaters.

It’s taken me about three days to calm down and four loads of laundry plus several quarts of Febreze to reclaim my wardrobe. I’m starting to see the funny side. No one was hurt, the cats don’t seem to have suffered smoke inhalation, and I’ve removed that bulb.

And the moral of the story is: light bulbs + sweaters + very tired boyfriend = disaster. Please remember that in the future, my friends.

KNITTING PREVAILS

In the midst of all this, I did manage to do a little knitting. I’ve knit about half of the back of cabled raglan. I got another dozen or so pattern repeats done on the Koigu scarf. I swatched for Moll. (Moll shall henceforth to be referred to as “cabled sleeveless turtleneck,” for the sake of those who have difficulty remembering all those Rowan names. Yes, I’m talking about me.) What with the baby arrival and a visit from another friend, there wasn’t as much Buffy the Vampire Slayer as I might have hoped, but it’s on dvd. It’ll keep.

So this evening… Will I forge ahead with the raglan? Or will I forsake it to start the cabled sleeveless turtleneck? (That really is not a catchy name. What to do?) Who can say? This is what makes life as a knitter so darn unpredictable. Try to stay calm, everyone. Take a few cleansing breaths.