For Christmas I've been making Hubby a cashmere scarf. Everyone in the family but hubby has a scarf, and I had a fondness for cashmere as I can wear it. I can’t tolerate most wool cloth, but until today cashmere hasn’t caused me any problems.
I had been working on the scarf a little at a time every night after Hubby goes to bed. Last night I ended up staying up most of the night finishing it as I had missed several nights working on it having gone to sleep before Hubby did.
So, I stayed awake quite a while after Hubby went to bed, finishing the scarf, and enjoying the feel of the soft yarn draped across my arm as I worked it into the scarf. This morning, I realized that cashmere is no-longer a benign material for me to work with when I woke up with this:
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When I first woke up it was more than double this size, going down my wrist onto my hand and up to my elbow. It felt like it was on fire while itching like crazy at the same time, and cried out for me to take an antihistamine ASAP and get some Benadryl cream on it even sooner than that.
Darn! I had so looked forward to making myself a cashmere vest once I had knitting figured out! Maybe I can still do so and just make sure to always wear a longer sleeved shirt under the vest. I REALLY like cashmere!
The funny thing, is when I worked with the yarn for an hour or less at a time, I had no reaction. It seems that direct exposure to it for several hours is something to be avoided at all costs in the future. At least I didn’t react as badly to it as I have to sheep wool in the past.
Maybe I’ll have some luck with Alpaca wool in the future. I’ll have to find a family member that doesn’t have a scarf to test that theory out on… Or maybe someday geneticists can develop a hypo-allergic sheep and/or goat? Probably not. I suspect I'll have to stick to the 100% cotton or cotton blends I've become so fond of.
Otherwise, Christmas in the Allimom household went swimmingly. The twins got cell phones and a lecture on the usage of said items (or lack of usage), and dire warnings against running their minutes up. #3 got an MP3 player, Hubby got all but one item from his list, and a few things that weren’t on the list, and I got everything I could wish for and more!
I had an early Christmas gift a couple days ago when two of my grades came in (both A’s). I’m still waiting on the third grade. Go me! I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas surprise as I hadn’t expected grades above a B on both of those classes with the restricted time and stress I had for the last half of the class.
Now I’m off to make Christmas dinner and listen to my Happy Feet CD my kids got me (great music, if you have a chance to listen to it!).
Merry Christmas to those of you that observe it, Happy Chanukah to those that observe that, and Happy Holidays to everyone else that celebrates other mid-winter festivals.