Ratzzen Fratzzen Skeeters!!

Fair warning: RANT in progress!! I hate mosquitoes and the little blood sucking vampires love me as much as I hate them. If there is a mosquito within flying distance when I'm outside it will make a bee line right to me and chomp. I swear that they must view me in much the same way that I view a Dairy Queen Peanut Buster Parfait - yummy!! To make matters worse, I'm fairly allergic to the bites. I can tell almost immediately that I've been bit and the itch goes on for three to four days. We've had a lot of rain recently in southeast Michigan and despite removing everything that might hold water from the yard and changing the birdbath daily, we have a bumper crop of skeeters. They're especially bad out around the garden where we can't use the Cutter spray that helps on the yard & bushes. I tried to pick beans last week after applying a liberal coating of a new non-greasy repellent from Cutter. The skeeters swarmed. I ran for the house and sprayed down with OFF - I did manage to get the grape tomatoes gathered and half the row of beans picked before I accumulated about 8 bites and gave it up. This weekend, after several days of existing in a fog because benadryl is the only thing that will help the itching and it knocks me for a loop, I tried again. This time I donned two pair of jeans, two pair of socks, a long sleeve t-shirt and a sweatshirt over top on the theory that if the extra layers were thicker than the mosquito's proboscis I might be able to thwart them. I pinned a piece of netting to a brimmed hat and gathered it around my neck to keep them away from my eyes, nose & mouth. Suffice it to say that I looked like a total idiot, but, along with the same repellent sprays, it worked. Beans & tomatoes gathered and no bites. Rant over, but I still hate mosquitoes!!

On the knitting front, I've finished the second shrug which, despite being narrower in the sleeves & body, took a little over 8 ounces of yarn. I still need to get a photo of it, preferably from the back. I've finished six hats and now I'm embarked on a design project in partnership with my longtime friend Kim. She explains it on her blog, Knittinology, so I won't repeat it here other than to say that the colors of the yarn are absolutely beautiful. You can see the yarn at Stephanie's The Wool Peddler.