No, I haven't suddenly changed this to a cookery blog. That is the bottom drawer of our family freezer and yes, it is full of spinning fibre. This weekend I had a great weekend away with knitting friends which included a trip to a local fibre shop. I had taken spinning projects with me and bought more fibre while I was there. Unfortunately, we discovered too late after we had all arrived and left knitting and spinning supplies here, there and everywhere, that the house we had rented was infested with carpet beetles. The first one was discovered in one of the upstairs bedrooms (on one of the beds), and then the more we looked the more we found. All over the living room carpet, in several more of the bedrooms, the critters were all over the place.
It's not the adult carpet beetle that does the damage to wool. It's their larvae that likes to munch their way through woolly goodies, but the adults lay eggs which hatch into larvae and none of us wanted our knitting projects to become nests for carpet beetles.
It's fair to say this weekend I have learned more than I had ever thought I would about getting rid of possible carpet beetle activity in your knitting and spinning stash. First of all, they like the dark, so keeping everything moving and exposed to the light regularly will discourage them. Second, if you wash anything washable, you wash any beetles, larvae or eggs away, so that's good. The difficulty is with stuff you can't wash. Treating carpets and soft furnishings probably requires professional pest control, but none of us were taking any of that lot home with us, so it was just a case of making sure stash and projects are clear. The trick there seems to be either heat or extreme cold, or both. Putting your stash in the freezer for at least 48-72 hours will kill any adult beetles or larvae. Thawing it out again encourages the hatching of any viable eggs left in there, and freezing again for another 48-72 hours will kill off anything else. Alternatively, a temperature of 50 degrees C for a minimum of 30 minutes will also kill any livestock in your stash. That's a very low setting in a domestic oven, but keep a very close eye on it. You don't want to set fire to your stash! Or a car in full sun on a hot day can easily reach an internal temperature of 50C or more. Baking the stash in the car could work if you live in an appropriate climate.
It's not the adult carpet beetle that does the damage to wool. It's their larvae that likes to munch their way through woolly goodies, but the adults lay eggs which hatch into larvae and none of us wanted our knitting projects to become nests for carpet beetles.
It's fair to say this weekend I have learned more than I had ever thought I would about getting rid of possible carpet beetle activity in your knitting and spinning stash. First of all, they like the dark, so keeping everything moving and exposed to the light regularly will discourage them. Second, if you wash anything washable, you wash any beetles, larvae or eggs away, so that's good. The difficulty is with stuff you can't wash. Treating carpets and soft furnishings probably requires professional pest control, but none of us were taking any of that lot home with us, so it was just a case of making sure stash and projects are clear. The trick there seems to be either heat or extreme cold, or both. Putting your stash in the freezer for at least 48-72 hours will kill any adult beetles or larvae. Thawing it out again encourages the hatching of any viable eggs left in there, and freezing again for another 48-72 hours will kill off anything else. Alternatively, a temperature of 50 degrees C for a minimum of 30 minutes will also kill any livestock in your stash. That's a very low setting in a domestic oven, but keep a very close eye on it. You don't want to set fire to your stash! Or a car in full sun on a hot day can easily reach an internal temperature of 50C or more. Baking the stash in the car could work if you live in an appropriate climate.
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