Yarn and little critters (flying)

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

Would that I had inherited any housekeeping standards :D

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Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET.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...

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

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

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 :

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.

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

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...

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 news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

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

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

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

However, I thought that the moths that hatch in flour and things like dog food were a different variety from the ones that eat woolen things. Am I wrong?

Hi Barbara:

Again it's a some do and some don't type thing. But all the larva that hatch from the eggs will. And it's only when we see the months flying that most people go looking for where they came from. Moths don't hatch from eggs as moths. And if the moths did come from the new stash of wool--there would be evidence of damage to the wool from the larva eating it.

Just keep in mind that moths and butterflies have pretty much the same life cycle. We just don't see the caterpillars from the small moths as we do for the butterflies.

Dorsey in VA

I know that it's the larvae that eat the wool (or flour). But I thought that different varieties of moths laid their eggs in the kind of place where the larvae would find food, and that the kind that laid their eggs in flour were an entirely different variety from the kind that laid their eggs on wool.

Does anyone know for certain whether I'm right or wrong? We seem to have both kinds in our house, and I could fight them better if I knew the answer to this question. I recently completely removed all flour products from our kitchen, washed everything with bleach, left all the cabinets vacant for more than a month, and seem to have rid myself of the flour variety. However, if the wool moths are about to lay eggs in the flour, it will have all been in vain.

B Vaughan wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

no, you're correct, but the OPs wife is just complaining about little flying things. the first thing they really need to do is determine exactly what they are dealing with, if it's wool moths (unlikely) or grain moths (highly likely) or carpet beetles, which aren't moths at all. it's a bit unfair to blame the yarn when the culprit is more likely to be something from the kitchen. lee

Hi Barbara:

Yes, you are correct that there are moths that will only feed on wool. But there are also verities that are opportunistic feeders. Another words they will feed on just about anything that is fiber or plant. So they will lay the eggs in either.

Barbara you are right ,,, there are many kinds of this things ,,, i don`t write their names [ just in case !!!] mirjam