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02/27/2005 Entry: "I smell like goat."

Or perhaps llama. Do they really smell that different?

I was showing my bag around to various seminary students the other day, bemoaning to my fellow Stitchin' Sems the sheer amount of fur on the bag. Remember, this is what I was dealing with.

I asked any of them if they or their spouses owned hair clippers that I could borrow to possibly get rid of some of that gawdawful fur. Not fuzz, I can accept fuzz. This was fur. Wookie fur. One of my more sadistic ingenious classmates suggested that I set it on fire. Excuse me??? "Yeah, I've done that before. Just take a candle, or a grill wand to it. Gently of course. You may want to have a lot of water nearby too. But it'll burn the fur down to the bag fiber."

Hmm... intriguing and dangerous. I live for danger. I filled up every bucket in the apartment with water while my roommate was out at the library, sat by a WIDE open window and gently waved my grill wand over the bag. Why hadn't I heard of this solution before? This girl was a genius! An entirely unheard of technique! I wonder if it works on mohair! It looks GREAT in comparison. After spending about an hour fanning a section with flame, dusting off the debris, flaming, dusting, flaming dusting,
I ended up with this:

You can SEE the fair isle! You can SEE the red! Still too small, but FABULOUS! It worked! I got up to stretch my legs and go to the bathroom. As I washed my hands, a slow knowledge began to grow at the nape of my neck. My hands were turning the soap suds black. Hmm... As I left the bathroom, I began to notice a pungent aroma throughout the apartment. Despite my best efforts of having a window open on a 30 degree day, the entire apartment smelled like a combination of burnt human hair and wet wool. I think that my sense of smell had readjusted itself in the brief pocket of clean atmosphere produced by the running water. As I entered to rarely used study room, the stench became overwhelming.

Shit. The roommate is going to be home any min...click. The electronic lock! She's home now! "What's that smell?" Um....
I spent the next half hour doing the following things: Lighting every scented candle in the apartment. Seaside mist, vanilla, sage and citrus. It didn't matter. The strange cacophany of scents produced by the candles HAD to be better than the smell of charred animal. I threw open every window and turned off the heat, driving the temperature down to 55 degrees. I sprayed the bag heavily with Lysol and the rest of the atmosphere with Neutra Air. Thankfully, things quickly got better in the apartment (thank you, Yankee Candle).

I then decided to kill two birds with one stone and take a shower with the bag. Well, in the same room as the bag, hoping to steam out some of the ungodly odor. As I first stepped into the shower, the cloud of llama essence lifted from my body. Blech. I liberally used my strongest scented shampoo, hoping that some scent would permeate the bag. No such luck. I only succeeded in making my bathroom smell like a petting zoo.

By this point, the apartment smelled liveable, as did I. I figured I'd leave the bag in front of an open window overnight in the study room with the door closed, allowing for maximum airing out but minimum apartment cool-down.

When I awoke this morning, the first thing I noticed was a New Smell. Something resembling gently rotting cabbage. I went around my room picking up articles of clothing, smelled my trash, hoping to isolate the New Smell in something other than The Inevitable. I tore from the room. The New Smell lingered in the common area too. I sniffed the kitchen trash, my bathroom trash. All of it carried the faint New Smell, but not strong enough to be The Source.

With courage I mustered from having God on my side, I opened the study room door and discovered that The Inevitable was indeed true. I had not succeeded in airing out the bag one bit, only on spreading its odiforous bouquet around the apartment in a subtle new form.

After a second round of Neutra Air, candles, and frigid air, I succumbed to attempting a second wash of the Farmer's Stall Bag. I dreaded this because after it had been washed the first time, my mother and I injured our upper arms by SHOVING large, rarely used books into the bag to give it shape. We bent some spines too, ours and theirs. I had no books of that sort here, nor did I have a second willing person in the book shoving enterprise. I also had no idea if washing would tease out more hairs thus requiring me to repeat the whole process all over again, this time with a genuine flamethrower.

Now the Farmer's Stall Bag hangs on a hook, soaking, ruining a towel that I shoved into it to give it shape. I think it's furring again. Sigh.

04:54 PM CST |