Attack of the Yarn-eating Monster

A thing happened to me last week.

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad THING.


I was sifting through the stash, trying to get my inventory updated, when I spied . . . something. Something that simply didn't belong. Something . . . buglike.

This little monster is a carpet beetle. AND HE WILL EAT YOUR YARN.

First I spotted just one and figured it was a fluke. But then I saw another. And another. Five miserable little buggers all told in my DK weight bin.

And then.

THEN!

A yarn cake. With mysterious ends poking out in various spots. And then another.

Not good.

Not good, not good, not good.

ALL of my yarn was bagged up and stuffed into our deep freezer. (Yet another reason to have one--it certainly wouldn't have fit in our kitchen freezer.) I spent what felt like years vacuuming my studio, wrestling the attachments into my yarn bins and every other nook and cranny that might be hosting a yarn-eating monster.

For a week, I felt lost, adrift in a sea of half-used skeins and projects that couldn't be started.

I was finally able to rescue it yesterday:

Welcome home!

Then it was time to get down to the task of inspecting and bug-proofing.

  

I checked each and every skein for damage, and am happy to report that I found none. I won't really be sure until I try to use them, but it seems the feast was limited to 2 old skeins of O-Wool.

 

I'm not taking chances anymore though. 

 

 

Every skein in my stash will now be stored in an airtight bag. That's still no guarantee, but it's something.

I zipped them all up, crammed them back into the bins, and breathed a sigh of relief that the outcome hadn't been worse.

I sometimes feel like my stash is an art collection: carefully curated over the years, reviewed semi-annually to get rid of pieces that don't fit, gazed upon lovingly in off hours. It's just heartbreaking that something would try to eat it.