Knitting in the Time of Moths?

Hey look! I'm sewing leaves together!! Yay!

Or at least, I was up until a few days ago. I decided I've found a few too many moths in my pheromone traps and am now in full-throttle de-mothing mode. Which is exhausting. And despite having thoroughly cleaned the upstairs and moving all potentially affected laundry out to be laundered ... I caught ANOTHER moth last night. I feel like this either means that I don't actually have a moth problem--that they are just flittering in from the outside and that is why I'm not actually finding much damage--or else ... it means I have a major problem somewhere. Argh.

So the only times I've been touching this blanket lately have been to pull it out of the basket and give it a good shake. Just in case someone decides to munch on it.

I've also found carpet beetles, so I guess deep-cleaning is a good thing right now. But so stressful.

Anyway, the blanket is a little less than halfway put together. It will hibernate until after I finish cleaning, and then I need to knit a hat for my cousin who is entering Carmel in August ... and then I will finish this beastie. It is turning out beautifully--I'm half-tempted to keep it for myself, except Michael would never let me get away with it--but I am not enjoying the seaming process. Oh well.



Reading: Better Than Before, a book about habits that wasn't quite what I thought it would be, but the writing is engaging enough to keep me going. The Green Ember is a book much loved on this blog and so I thought I'd give it a read and keep it for the boys to grow into.


Linking up with Ginny!

Naptime Miscellany--Moths and Other Oddities

This is what I get for offering to write a moth post.

One of the things I was/am going to mention in said post--you're never really rid of them. I think they can go dormant or something when the weather's cold, because they've been popping up now and then since April. All in our bedroom, which has almost zero wool in it, so I wasn't too concerned.

But it just keeps happening. Two or three males flying around that I squish or get caught in the traps.

Only this time I've found TWO downstairs. Deep breaths.

I am, once again, examining my yarn and other woolens from top to bottom, and STILL no traces of damage. They are like moth ninjas with a secret base somewhere, and it is stressing me out.

The fact is that moths are almost an inevitable part of life for any lover of natural fibers who lives in a certain climate. I was in the yarn store yesterday looking for something green, and I found a dead moth on a skein. In the yarn store! Once you know what you're looking for--and are paranoid enough to expect it everywhere--you will find them.

I'm not sure if that's encouraging or discouraging, but there it is.

It makes you wonder how old woolen textiles have survived so long. I guess it's a combination of climate control (winters without heat surely killed off many pests) and the fact that people didn't own an excess of clothes that were put into storage; most things were in regular use.

In other knitting-related weirdness ... my mother-in-law hadn't knit for years and years, but she had a canvas bag with some yarn and needles that Keith brought back from San Francisco. In it I found this odd tool, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. An unusual cable needle? Something for a craft other than knitting?

I posted the picture on Ravelry, and most of those people were just as stumped ... until a veterinarian came along and said it's a grooved director, or incision guide. A surgical tool used for guiding scalpels and other instruments where they need to go without cutting other tissues.

My MIL was never a vet, or a nurse, so I'm not sure why she even owned one of these, let alone how it ended up in her knitting bag! How funny, right? I wish I could ask her for the story behind it. I wish in general that knitting was something that we could have bonded over. There are a lot of things I wish, and I am realizing, a lot of hurts that I still have to process. But I hope, someday, we will meet again, and be able to know and love each other in a way that wasn't possible in this life.

And she can tell me why she had a surgical tool with her knitting needles. :)

Ordinary Time

I've seen the word "hibernate" floating around the internet a lot this winter. I guess that's kind of what we've been doing--laying close to home, living life quietly. Ordinary Time, as the Church in her wisdom has given us. 

Keith takes the four-wheel-drive car to work, so there are times when I can't get up the small hill and out of our icy driveway. And it's been bitter cold and I've been reluctant to take the kids out anyway. 

Perhaps because I've been indoors so much, I've lately gotten a familiar itch--the desire to change something, to tackle a project in our home. More specifically, I really want to do something in the kitchen. Since redoing the walls and cabinets are not on the radar right now, I've settled for finishing this Ikea kitchen cart.

It still needs another coat of two of turquoise paint. I'm not sure I like it. It wanted something intense, but not necessarily this bright. I may buy a can of something darker, more peacock-colored. What do you think?

I am pretty proud of the staining! Of course, the babies found a paint stick with not-quiet-dried primer on it and tracked it all over the kitchen and dining room floor (and left a handprint on my stained shelves), resulting in some frantic scrubbing and our first call to the Mr. Yuck poison center. But all's well that end's well!

I've also slowly been emptying the freezer of yarn, baking it at a low temperature in the oven to kill any eggs. I have two ovens, so I can also bake bread or roast something for dinner at the same time. Which works out great in theory; not so much when, in practice, you turn the wrong oven on to 375 degrees and fill your kitchen with the smell of burning wool! I am a little sad; that yarn was meant for a lovely sweater. 

So far I've been pulling out yarn that I think was unaffected by moths; I am screwing myself up to be more ruthless when I reach the back of the freezer and the wool I know was eaten, lived in, and otherwise infested. Much as it will be hard to part with that yarn, I will hate myself if I keep it and end up having a brand new infestation because of it. Part of me wants to keep the it in the freezer forever because then ... I still have it. But it is time to let go. 

 And while I do this quiet work, the boys enjoy playing upstairs. All they really ask is a Mama to be their audience. :)

How many battles make a war?

I know you were all dying to hear an update on the moth situation, right? Or maybe just assuming there was no update because I killed all the buggers?

There is, sadly, an update.

First of all, the downstairs freezer still looks like this.

So it's a really good thing we have an extra freezer downstairs. There are also shawls and sweaters shoved into the freezer upstairs, not to mention all the sweaters that went into my mother's chest freezer.


Last month I laundered EVERYTHING in our closet, took all the coats and suits to the drycleaners, scrubbed the HECK out of our closet with Pinesol, and moved the bookshelf that had my yarn and scrubbed the heck out of that whole area. I vacuumed our rugs every day for a few weeks. And I felt okay, because I'd done everything that I could reasonably do.

And then I found a wool cardigan in the bottom of another closet, complete with holes and moth poop.

Deep breaths. It looked like old damage. No larvae or moths or pupae to be seen. Scrub the closet. Wash all the things. Okay. Deep breaths.

Well, I had the vacuum out, so let's clear the dust bunny out of the twins' closet. Which has no wool. Just some shoes, some bins of baby clothes, some duffel bags on the floor.

Except look ... an old forgotten glove on the floor next to the duffel bags.

Freak out. Throw away the glove. Pull out the duffel bags. Find a LIVING MOTH running away from me! VACUUM IT TO DEATH. Scrub! Wash! PANIC! And while we're at it let's throw ALL THE TOWELS AND SHEETS from the linen closet in the washing machine and dump the rest of the Pinesol in there and banish the baby-towel basket to the deck for two weeks!

Because the last time I talked myself out of overreacting apparently I missed the moths.

That was two weeks ago.

Today, I found this.

A fingerless glove that was waiting for its missing mate in a bucket of odds and ends. The little white sandy stuff is either eggs or poop, and the whitish cylinder is either an old pupae or casing. There was a moth living at the bottom of the bucket.

Blargh.

Whenever enough time passes that I feel safe, perhaps up to tackling the yarn in the freezer, I find another place the moths have landed. The hard part is not knowing whether it's new or was simply there all along.

Hexipuffing Without Fear

Last night was craft night. But all my yarn was in the freezer. I debated pulling out a skein of sock yarn that I was relatively certain was clean, and starting the mate to a sock I found buried in my project bag during my house-wide wool inspection. But it felt like a risk move. 

Luckily a friend came to the rescue. Her sister-in-law entered the cloister recently, leaving behind an entire room full of yarn, beautiful lace shawls, and knitted monsters. The boys and I went over to visit, and I left with my arms full of yarn.

Isn't that beautiful sight? I also filled a large basket! 

I still miss my yarn, and am sad at the thought of losing part of it. But I'm very grateful for this generosity, and the timing was such a blessing. 

There were also a few hexipuffs in the box. I adopted them. :)

Anyway, right now that box is in a plastic storage bin with cedar blocks for company. I took some out for craft night last night, stuffed it and my hexipuff materials into a Ziploc bag, and whipped up a few puffs of my own. The Ziploc is maybe paranoia. Better safe than sorry, right?

I think I am okay with knitting in my own house now. Maybe. As long as the yarn never leaves my lap. 

I am thinking, though, that this yarn will not all be devoted to hexipuffs. The colors all together are a lovely sight, and there is so much of some of them ... maybe a pair of stripey, scrappy knee socks? Wouldn't that be fun?

And we're under attack ...

What would be the opposite of a yarn along post? Probably something like this.

That's my husband's scarf that I didn't finish in time for Christmas last year. It's been sitting at the bottom of the basket for months. During naptime this afternoon, I pulled it out and put it back on the needles. I found my place on the chart. I turned on my podcast. I knit a row. I shook the whole thing out onto the couch beside me.

A piece of the end came off in my hand.

I blinked. I held it up. I saw holes. I saw ... mealy stuff. Maybe that milk I'd spilled on it and wiped off--not super thoroughly--shortly before I set the thing aside for the summer?

A worm poked its head out at me. The same shade of blue as the yarn. The beautiful Brooklyn Tweed yarn.

I dropped the scarf. Jumped off the couch. Maybe indulged in a little shriek before venting my horror on Facebook. 

Slowly I did what I needed to, working up the courage for each step. Shoved all the yarn in the basket into the freezer; wait five minutes. Take out all the papers that were in the basket and throw them out in a ziploc bag; wait five minutes. Shove the scarf into a plastic bag and then into the freezer. Wait again. Examine the basket, notice moth bodies in the bottom, set it outside to deal with later. Vacuum, put the vacuum bag into a ziploc and throw it out. 

I vacillated about the scarf itself. The actual damage was all within the first foot of the scarf. The remaining yard or so was hole-free. As it sat in my freezer while I looked at the stash on my shelf, I decided to just throw it all out. Better safe than sorry.

But when I unfurled it onto the deck ... it was a hard decision to make. I cut off the damaged part ... and noticed that the rest of the scarf was peppered with moth corpses. That answered my question.

still in disgrace

 I plan on washing the basket with hot soapy water and letting it sit awhile to make sure nothing else hatches. Because I really, really love this basket. And I'd really, really like to still use it for knitting projects. But I welcome any words of advice or warning.

I will probably throw out the yarn in the freezer, except for a skein I need for a sweater (should I just order another??) and half a skein of Tosh Sock, which I guess I'll have to wash.

And I will look through my entire stash. I am fairly certain it's safe, as it was in another room entirely (and had no milk spilled on it), but I need to check. But not until my husband comes home. And not without a glass of wine.

In the meantime I'll just sit here jumping a mile whenever I imagine I see a flutter in the corner of my vision.