Saturday, January 30, 2010

You should probably sit down before you read this.....

Greetings and Dear Laura: I know, you're already in a dead faint that I'm posting again so soon! But that's not why you should be sitting down, and maybe have a stiff drink nearby. I'm about to talk about something that frankly makes knitters with healthy stashes break out in hives and get lightheaded.

Moths.


*Deep Breaths*


A few weeks ago, my mom asked me about some small holes in her
felted mittens. You can imagine the panic and dread when I saw those obvious moth holes. I mean, altho I have my own apartment, we live in the same house! And apparently we've been sharing it with some wool eaters.

I went into rescue mode. I gathered all the wool items, washed them in my Eucalyptus wash, and stuck them in the freezer. Then I started sorting my stash, and putting all of the wool into space bags and sucking the air out. I started calling family members looking for freezer space, because weeks and weeks of very cold temperatures, it had warmed up and we spent two weeks or so above freezing. All of the snow melted, and everything was muddy. I put the first batch of space bags in a freezer at my sil's and left them there for a week. (The treatments I read about said 2-3 days, but I didn't have time during the week to get them back!) In the end, I could see the forecast finally getting colder, so I waited until this weekend for the rest. I've loaded up all the wool into my car, and I'm parking outside. With lows in the single digits and highs around 20, any little pests should be dead.

The up side of this process has been the fun of playing with my stash. I did at one point read that wool blends are not at risk, but I had put most of those in the first batch, so they've been frozen anyway. I ended up with four categories, and I have pictures.




1. Less-than-full skeins and leftover balls of wool yarn.




2. Wool and wool blends, bagged with all the air sucked out, have been added.




3. One basket of acrylic and acrylic blends have been added.




4. Cotton yarn has been added.
Yes! This is my entire stash, in one place and here for all the world to see!!



Oh, and mom looks fabulous in her sweater, don't you think??
Keep knitting! Cynthia (aka Designated Knitter!)

5 comments:

Lauren said...

1. I still can't believe you posted a picture of your whole stash!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Dare you to show it all WITHOUT the space saving bags ;-) LOL!!!!

3. OMG YOUR MOM'S SWEATER IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really does fit her PERFECTLY! Wowza!!!! Really really nice work Cynthia!!!!!

Scate said...

Seeing a stash like that - wow. I want to show my husband to say "See, my little itty bitty stash has lots of room to grow"! I'm envious - of the stash, not the moths. I have never heard of this treatment - but will keep it mind if I even need to use it. Good luck!

marit said...

The moths definitely had no idea what they were in for...

Like your stash. Itisn't really that much, is it...?;-)

Your mom's sweater is awesome!!!

correspondent said...

Hi there, Glad to hear you were able to save your wools from the dreaded moths with a little help from Space Bag! Just wanted to let you know that you'll have the chance to win free Space Bag products if you'd like to share your story on our new online community site. Please feel free to use the "contact us" form at http://spacesaverscommunity.com if you have any questions. Hope to hear from you soon! Best, Space Savers community correspondent

Unknown said...

Amazing sweater! My mom's a knitter and sent me the most wonderful red fruit loop socks recently! sigh...Pam
http://pamssointoit.blogspot.com/