Yarn and little critters (flying)

My wife (read "Swedish housekeeping standards") is concerned about
little things that fly and which she finds occasionally around the
house. She thinks they are carpet beetles since she has found a couple
under the edges of the wool carpet next to the felt underpad. She has
also found a couple in the kitchen and even a couple in the bathroom.

After she found nibbles on a wool coat, we had all the woolen stuff
dry-cleaned, oriental rugs cleaned, and the house sprayed. After a
while, maybe a year now, we have guests again.

She is suspect of all yarns and when I recently received some yarn from
a RCTY, I had to quarantine them for several days in the freezer! [We
also have some yarn in the freezer in Sweden recovering from an actual
attack in the storage room there.]

Mothballs have horrible smell which doesn't seem to go away. Cedar and
lilac/lavendar leaves seem to be short-term unless you sand the cedar to
keep fresh oil exposed. In fact both of those seem to me to be marketing
gambits in response to the strong smell of moth balls.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?

Admittedly I am the cause and culprit of the yarn stash but it is all
her fault for my enrolling in a weaving class. So now I have two small
rigid heddle looms and several stoles for clergy completed and given
away. The WIP and hopefully not a UFO is a purse for my wife made from
the leftover of a purple stole when I kept weaving to use up the warp
after the stole was long enough. bands of purple and a couple of gold
thread.

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:06:37 GMT, klh
spewed forth :

My wife (read "Swedish housekeeping standards") is concerned about
little things that fly and which she finds occasionally around the
house. She thinks they are carpet beetles since she has found a couple
under the edges of the wool carpet next to the felt underpad. She has
also found a couple in the kitchen and even a couple in the bathroom.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?

Would that I had inherited any housekeeping standards

Air the stash regularly, inspect it for bugs, quarantine and treat any
suspect goods. I confess that I now nuke anything that may be
suspect:

I found a small ball of yarn behind my work table that had a couple of
bugs attached. I put the ball in the microwave with a cup of water
and nuked on high heat for 5 mins. Possibly I'm only weeding out the
weak bugs and creating a super-strain of them, but I hope that bug
eggs succumb to microwaves...

An alternative to freezing (which honestly doesn't kill 'em - where do
we think bugs go during the winter??) is to wrap the stuff in plastic
and leave it in a sunny spot for several days.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Wooly wrote:

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:06:37 GMT, klh
spewed forth :


My wife (read "Swedish housekeeping standards") is concerned about
little things that fly and which she finds occasionally around the
house. She thinks they are carpet beetles since she has found a couple
under the edges of the wool carpet next to the felt underpad. She has
also found a couple in the kitchen and even a couple in the bathroom.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?



Would that I had inherited any housekeeping standards

Air the stash regularly, inspect it for bugs, quarantine and treat any
suspect goods. I confess that I now nuke anything that may be
suspect:

I found a small ball of yarn behind my work table that had a couple of
bugs attached. I put the ball in the microwave with a cup of water
and nuked on high heat for 5 mins.

but what about the neighbor balls or floor or such? any suspicions about
ancestry or family?

Possibly I'm only weeding out the
weak bugs and creating a super-strain of them, but I hope that bug
eggs succumb to microwaves...


is this the wool equivalent to bird's nest soup?

An alternative to freezing (which honestly doesn't kill 'em - where do
we think bugs go during the winter??) is to wrap the stuff in plastic
and leave it in a sunny spot for several days.


I wonder about that too. Sweden and North Dakota norrlands have some
really fierce mosquitoes and black flies in the summer time and well
below 0F temps in the wintertime. Much colder than my freezer!

And my wife is just off the phone from a long discussion with Ortho tech
support about bug bombs and such stuff. I just wonder if an occasional
find is worth that. Will it really cure the problem or just symptoms
[like cold medicine].

klh in VA [USA]

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:37:06 GMT, klh
spewed forth :


but what about the neighbor balls or floor or such? any suspicions about
ancestry or family?

I've got sealed concrete floors and six cats. I use cotton area rugs
where I use them at all, but most of my furniture (including the
mattresses!) has some wool component to it. So bugs of any sort are a
cause for concern because I don't want to have to replace or even
treat the furniture.

I try to keep my yarn and fibers out of harm;s way but occasionally
something escapes or is just too tempting for a cat. The escapee yarn
was hosting a couple of small brown beetlish things, which may have
been carpet beetles, I just don't know. I did look over everything
else in the room - furniture, projects, a couple of sweaters - and
didn't find others, so maybe these came in through the fireplace, or
just "grew" there.


Possibly I'm only weeding out the
weak bugs and creating a super-strain of them, but I hope that bug
eggs succumb to microwaves...


is this the wool equivalent to bird's nest soup?

Yes, and it smells about as appetitzing when fresh from the microwave.


And my wife is just off the phone from a long discussion with Ortho tech
support about bug bombs and such stuff. I just wonder if an occasional
find is worth that. Will it really cure the problem or just symptoms
[like cold medicine].

If you air the stash frequently and inspect all your woolens - not
just stash - you should be ok. One moth does not an infestation make,
unless it was already knocked up when it came into the house.

There's something in *raw* wool that draws moths, but supposedly a
thorough scour will remove that element (maybe a sulphide? I don't
remember). Storing wool and woolens in paper wrapping with all the
seams sealed will exclude most bugs that'll bother the stash - they'll
be able to smell the goodies but they won't or can't get thru the
paper.

I really think nuking the house with chemical bug bombs is overkill
for a couple of moths - you'll coat all your surfaces with toxins,
you'll coat all your yarns with toxins, and all that crap has to be
scoured out before the house is healthy again. Unless you hank all
the yarn and leave it hanging somewhere near the bomb some critters
may go ungassed in the innards of a rolled ball. You'd also have to
treat the carpets again (just cleaning the surface won't get anything
living under the pads) as well as sending all your clothing out to be
cleaned.

And then, you wear a sweater over to someone's house, one of *their*
bugs finds you and hitches a ride home, and you start all over again.

Hygiene I think is the way to go, not bombing. But that's just me.

Ah, another thought: diatomaceous earth. It won't treat flying bugs,
but used judiciously - ie, sprinkled lightly in the stash, in woolens
storage areas, under carpets - it might eradicate the crawlie stages
of any critters. DE is much nicer than chemical treatments, tho it
can cause respiratory problems if inhaled, so wear a mask when
sprinkling and take stuff outside for a thorough beating before
wearing or working with.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Mothballs have horrible smell which doesn't seem to go away. Cedar and
lilac/lavendar leaves seem to be short-term unless you sand the cedar to
keep fresh oil exposed. In fact both of those seem to me to be marketing
gambits in response to the strong smell of moth balls.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?

Moths which feast on yarn locate it by smell. Before the "invention" of
mothballs, strong smelling spices or herbs were used to protect fibers.
Cinnamon, cloves, peppermint or the flowers of the lavender plant will help
deter these pesky critters from munching your stash and make the surrounding
area smell pleasant too. The essential oils used in cooking or soap making
also work. Saturate several cotton balls in the oils and place them amongst
the wool, or purchase lavendar scented soap. Yes, you will have to replace
them as the oils evaporate. Another solution is to wash all wools with a
shampoo that has a lingering fragance.
My stash is stored in the orginal packages in plastic bins, this also seems
to help deter attacks by critters.
Good luck in getting rid of them.
DA

"Wooly" skrev i melding
...
On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:06:37 GMT, klh
spewed forth :

I found a small ball of yarn behind my work table that had a couple of
bugs attached. I put the ball in the microwave with a cup of water
and nuked on high heat for 5 mins. Possibly I'm only weeding out the
weak bugs and creating a super-strain of them, but I hope that bug
eggs succumb to microwaves...

The microwave!...
what a splendid idea, Wooly!
AUD ;-)

Hi:

I know I'm a newbie to knitting--but to critters I have 15 years of
experience in retail garden sales.

First and foremost you have to find the source of the months--and
surprisingly it might not be your stash. It actually might be a fluke that
they showed up at the same time as your new yarn.

I noticed in a response that you have cats--did you know that they could
have come in with the dried cat food? Do you have bird seed in the
house--they could have come from there. What about potatoes or inions? Yup
could have come from there also. Or potting soil, or dried flowers or 101
other common everyday things that you bring into your house.

Now my Mom's been knitting for years--I mean since I before I was born--she
was knitting socks for her Dad. And I asked her--she said she's never had
months come from her stash. other things, yes. But not from her stash.
She asked if you brought any cardboard boxes home from the grocery store.

So I guess the long and the short of it is--While they may convent and want
your stash--most likely they came from something else. if possible keep an
eye out and see if you can spot where they came from or where they first
showed up. than look for them in that area. More than likely you'll be
able to find the source.

Dorsey in VA

"klh" wrote in message
news:1Sxsf.5089$Q73.1267@trnddc03...
My wife (read "Swedish housekeeping standards") is concerned about little
things that fly and which she finds occasionally around the house. She
thinks they are carpet beetles since she has found a couple under the
edges of the wool carpet next to the felt underpad. She has also found a
couple in the kitchen and even a couple in the bathroom.

After she found nibbles on a wool coat, we had all the woolen stuff
dry-cleaned, oriental rugs cleaned, and the house sprayed. After a while,
maybe a year now, we have guests again.

She is suspect of all yarns and when I recently received some yarn from a
RCTY, I had to quarantine them for several days in the freezer! [We also
have some yarn in the freezer in Sweden recovering from an actual attack
in the storage room there.]

Mothballs have horrible smell which doesn't seem to go away. Cedar and
lilac/lavendar leaves seem to be short-term unless you sand the cedar to
keep fresh oil exposed. In fact both of those seem to me to be marketing
gambits in response to the strong smell of moth balls.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?

Admittedly I am the cause and culprit of the yarn stash but it is all her
fault for my enrolling in a weaving class. So now I have two small rigid
heddle looms and several stoles for clergy completed and given away. The
WIP and hopefully not a UFO is a purse for my wife made from the leftover
of a purple stole when I kept weaving to use up the warp after the stole
was long enough. bands of purple and a couple of gold thread.

In article , Wooly
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:06:37 GMT, klh
spewed forth :

Michelle. High marks for originality.... nooked moths, way to go. LOL

I have similar problems at times with fleece roving and woolen yarns
around. I use pieces of cedar, stolen from my husbands workshop that I
tuck in among my weaving supplies. The fleeces are all well cleaned and
washed, and kept in a fine woven sailcloth memory wired bin with a
zippered lid on them. Remember moths does not like light or movement.
Keep your stash in clear plasic if you keep it in plastic and do move it
around open bags and shaked the skeins out, etc. etc.on a regular basis. I
would not use moth balls or any other chemical compound, for fear of
getting sick myself, and the moth will still happily chew away at my
stuff. I have been told using news papers to wrap you stash in helps as
well. Moth don't seem to like the printing ink, but I do not know if that
is true or hear say.

Good luck with the little critters.

Els

My wife (read "Swedish housekeeping standards") is concerned about
little things that fly and which she finds occasionally around the
house. She thinks they are carpet beetles since she has found a couple
under the edges of the wool carpet next to the felt underpad. She has
also found a couple in the kitchen and even a couple in the bathroom.

Any suggestions please on the care and maintenance of the yarn stash?

Would that I had inherited any housekeeping standards

Air the stash regularly, inspect it for bugs, quarantine and treat any
suspect goods. I confess that I now nuke anything that may be
suspect:

I found a small ball of yarn behind my work table that had a couple of
bugs attached. I put the ball in the microwave with a cup of water
and nuked on high heat for 5 mins. Possibly I'm only weeding out the
weak bugs and creating a super-strain of them, but I hope that bug
eggs succumb to microwaves...

An alternative to freezing (which honestly doesn't kill 'em - where do
we think bugs go during the winter??) is to wrap the stuff in plastic
and leave it in a sunny spot for several days.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.
This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%.
Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Hi Dorsey,

You are correct about the dried dog food. One of my neighbors started
seeing moths flying around in the house and couldn't figure where they
were coming from. I told her about the dog food so she moved that
outside in a closed container and bino when she checked the moths were
in the bottom of it and had died. That is why I won't buy any food
products in a market if it's stored near dog or cat food.

Hugs,

Nora in rainy upstate NY

Living in a warm country , once i open the cat food bag , i put in a
plastic Bucket that has a lid ,, keeps it fresher, and avoids
uninvited guests.
Wools, are suposed to breath, modern manufactured wools are treated
against those `thingies`,,,, i lay loads of new nice smelling soaps
between my wools. and when they dry up use them, while putting fresh
ones between the wools and my other clothes.
Naftalin is a poison that eventually piles up in your system , thus i
don`t want that in my house.
Twice a year i go through my wools, if i use a big nylon bag for some
wools it is not tight closed just laid on top of the bag.
Since i work onmany things at the same time i use a bit from here and
a bit from there , thus the twice a year check straightens things up
,but also gives me cause to Reasset what i have , and rekindles my
ideas what i can make with them ...
mirjam