There are always several nightmare situations lurking in the shadows for we fiber lovers. Recently, I’ve had a brush with one of the worst.
Somebody, or in this case something, has been eating my stash. Not a lot of it, admittedly, but enough to seriously put the wind up me and make me look closely at my stash storage methods.
Look at this.
I think it’s fairly safe to say that no one in this house took to a ball of laceweight wool with scissors and so I think we all know who or what the culprit might be. I actually discovered this one a while ago – a much loved ball I procured from Donyale over a year ago. I even started knitting with it once before giving up the project half way through (my fault; not the yarn!). The problem was that it wasn’t stored in a zip lock bag; a lot of my stash is. Sometimes I’m slow to buy a new box of bags so some yarns linger for a while, floating free. Sometimes I take them out of a bag to start a project and a bag gets repurposed. I think that’s what happened with this one. It was in a plastic tub with few other free floating balls in amongst the plastic bagged stash. In a panic I checked and there were no more shredded balls or skeins and so I relaxed a little.
Until yesterday.
Nearing the end of a skein for my Featherweight cardigan, I found the third and last skein and started winding it on the swift. About a quarter of the way through, the yarn broke. I thought nothing of it and started winding a fresh ball. That too broke. After the third break, I started to get really worried. I checked the skein and sure enough there were the tell-tale razored edges. Something had eaten it. I ended up with this small selection of balls.
I remained calm through all of this. Had a bit of a discussion online with DrK and decided to bag them up and stick them in the sun to roast the little buggers who thought my stash was tasty. At the end of the day, I brought the steaming bag inside and froze it. I did both methods because I don’t know what’s in there or what the best method is. One of the options had to work.
And now I’ll get on with the rest of my cardigan.
But I did spend some time excavating my stash today – 90% of which lives in big plastic tubs, tightly sealed and inside plastic zip lock bags. I checked the stuff that was loose and found no other skeins that were eaten. Not one. So it’s a bit of a mystery.
In happier news, I can follow up on the Golden Vintage Cardigan in the last post. I did put her through the tumble dryer; I dampened her down a little and gave her 20 minutes in the dryer. Good as gold! Soft and comforting, just like cotton should be. And because I wasn’t able to get to Addicted to Fabric for buttons until Saturday, but wanted to wear her to work the next day, I dug around and found a brooch I was given some time ago by Princess Pea. An idea struck and I think it worked. This little piece was the perfect fastener, I think.
I still went and bought some small simple buttons, but I think the brooch has found the perfect home. Anyone know what the craft is that makes such brooches? A friend saw it yesterday and said her ex mother-in-law made one for her once and she never knew what to do with it. Whatever the craft is, it’s pretty.
Bells
