Okay, I was in a bit of a state the other night, so I may not have been perfectly clear. The evil fiend shown below is none other than a nefarious member of the Tineidae family of moths... THE WOOL EATING KIND! The ones that eat wool, and one of which calmly waltzed out of my Sheep Tote last night, are uniformly buff colored and about half an inch long with similarly small wings. Here is a better photo



I have gone into full lock down and sterilization.

All animal fiber has been bagged into brand-new ziplocs in hopes of depriving any little monsters of air. The freezer is stuffed to the brim with as many bags as I could fit for the first batch. According to research around the internet, the thing to do is freeze for 72 hours (preferably in a chest freezer, but I don't have one so am using the "set the freezer as low as it goes and don't open it for the whole time" method), then warm to at least 50F for a "short time" which I am going to interpret as a day, and then freeze again. Switch out the yarn and repeat. In addition to lack of air and freezer temperatures, the thermal shock is really supposed to do them in.

I didn't see any holes in the tote, so hopefully I nipped this one in the bud. I didn't look all that carefully, though, since it is going to be felted. I believe that any infestation would be limited to the three grocery bags of yarn that were just sort of out, but there has been a fair bit of moving yarn in and out of cupboards, so I'm not taking any chances and just doing it all. Wish me luck.

*Note, there were a number of sites that helped me, I think the best summary of the course of action is at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ipm/schoolipm/chap-7.pdf

posted by Anonymous @ 8:36 AM