The other day while out with my knitting buddies one of my friends were telling us about some yarn she bought at a local yarn shop in the area that is going out of business. The owner had died all most a year ago and her son's no longer want to continue the store. Anyway... she was showing us some wool she bought and it had critters living in it. there was several spots that the moths had ate through the strands and had laid eggs. EEEEEEEEEKKS!!! She thinks that the yarn already had the bugs in the yarn when she bought it. So she bagged her yarn and put it in the deep freezer. Well don't you know... I got to thinking about my yarn and what might be lurking in or around it! So this morning I got up and empties my little deep freezer out and started bagging up my yarn and putting it in the freezer unfortunately, I have more yarn than I have freezer... That rises another question. What type of yarn does these things eat? Do they just eat wool and animal type yarns. How about mixed yarns with maybe 10 or 20 % wool do they need to be frozen too? Then I would have to ask how does one store yarn to keep the pesky little critters out of your yarns to keep them from re-infesting ones yarns with larvae or just plan ole eating up the goods? How do you store your yarn? Do you put them in large totes or boxes? Do you store your wools in plastic bags? I have heard people say not to store yarn in plastic ... but they come from the manufactures that way? and yarn stores has the yarn in bags to keep the dust of them ... So what gives? What is the right way to keep our stash safe from these little critters. After this batch has been in the freezer for 2 days, then I will take them out and put in a new batch until all my yarn has been in the deep freezer for a few days.
That's a good idea. I never thought about that.
ReplyDeleteIt's a scary thought, isn't it?! I'm rotating my bags of yarn and wool through my freezer. Each batch gets a chilly two or three day vacation. Then, I'll pack them back into their plastic bins that I'll clean out with some spray cleaner (even though they look clean already). I'm going to try and find a box of cedar closet siding strips and cut them small enough to put several in each bin. I hate to use moth balls cuz they smell sooo bad and I think they're poison. The only other yarn I found buggies in (besides my Cherry Tree Hill) was some Woolease...and that's mostly acrylic! Who'd a thunk?! I've been inspecting carefully and, so far, those are the only ones. I heard the other skeins in that store aren't looking very good either.
ReplyDeleteCheryl, Betsy said she would replace the yarn with new yarn if you let her know. I couldnt remember whitch yarn you said the nits got into. She said she feels bad, When I told her we were putting our yarn in the freezer, she said that she hadn't that about that and would try it. I told her it wouldn't be a bad idea to put all that from the shop into a freezer for a while.
ReplyDeleteI've read that you have to leave it in the freezer for two weeks!
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