Yarn just might be the death of me.

Things have been pretty hectic lately and for some reason, I'm actually enjoying it. I still have no pictures of my finished Clapotis. The batteries in the camera are dead and I haven't had a chance to run to the store for new ones yet. However, I will get some by this weekend.

Friday night after work, I decided to get my hair cut. I told the woman that I wanted a couple inches cut off, and she took off 8. Initially I was highly upset, but after a few hours, it really grew on me. [Click picture to enlarge. Picture is of Lauren (on the right) and I sporting our new hair cuts.] It's the perfect length for summer, although I am a little annoyed that it's too short for me to put back in a ponytail anymore.

On the knitting front, I knit a Buttonhole Bag using two different colors of Reynolds Lopi. I love how it turned out, although I felted it a second time and as a result it's a little smaller than I would have liked it. Lesson learned.

While I enjoy the finished product, I didn't enjoy knitting it as much as I thought I would. This however is no fault of the wonderful pattern. This is a result of my now apparent allergies to Lopi.

At first it wasn't that bad, I was just a little itchy, but as the knitting continued, the discomfort grew. In the end I ended up breaking out in hives, and even worse, I did something incredibly stupid that could have turned out more serious than it did.

I didn't have any stitch markers big enough to fit on the needles, so I used the ones that you clip on to the actual stitch. When I would get to the beginning of the round and the half way mark, I would remove the stitch marker, hold it in my mouth, knit the stitch and then replace the marker. I didn't think anything of it at first, it didn't dawn on me since I was allergic to the yarn, it was probably a bad idea. It finally clicked when a small, stray hair from the yarn ended up in my mouth and then being accidently swallowed.

My throat started closing up [luckily it's a mild allergy and it didn't close up to the point where I couldn't breath] and my insides felt all wonky. Even with the Bendryl, I still didn't quite feel all that great the next morning.

This isn't the first time I continued to knit with a yarn I was allergic to. But rest assured it will be the last. I finally learned my lesson.