Sunday, September 09, 2007

Mystery Moths

We have been haunted around here for some time (actually a bit longer than I'd care to admit) by one of the scariest pests known to knitters... moths. Prior to my commitment to cram as much wool as possible into as many bins and drawers I could store, we have never seen anything other than the occasional moth drawn in by a light bulb... so clearly this has had me a bit concerned. However, repeated searches through my yarn revealed nothing... and they didn't seem to come flitting out of my yarn drawers when I opened them. No, as a matter of fact... they seemed to be much more likely to be found in the kitchen. Hmmm....

Since my yarn didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, I continued to be puzzled but was able to ignore them (yes, this embarrasses me to admit... but I'm a busy woman & there are many more annoying things going on around my house than a few moths). It wasn't until my son found them in the cereal bag a couple of weeks ago that I figured it out. They weren't wool moths. No. They were only pantry moths. Whew!

That's an easy fix. I just had to throw out all the open boxes and bags of food, clean out the cupboards, and then not put food back in them (ie. shop) for a couple of weeks to make sure they were gone. Then in one trip to the grocery store, I was easily able to restock the pantry and pick lots of plastic storage bags for assurance. Heck, groceries are even a budgeted expense! Can't get much easier than that!

Geesh! Can you imagine all the work it would've been if I had had to replace all my stash? Yikes!

BTW - I'm enjoying your comments. I must admit that I need discipline in ALL of the areas you've mentioned so far.

Now I must go complete the armholes on the back of my Minimalist Cardigan so I can start laundry sometime today. (I would like to take a moment though to commend myself on my discipline in sticking with the back of a moss-stitch sweater for a whole weekend... after all, laundry will never really be done... but, if I keep at it, my sweater will.)

4 comments:

sophanne said...

"laundry will never really be done but if I keep at it my sweater will." I'm totally adding that to my new favorite sayings list on my blog!

Tammy said...

Argh, those pantry moths!!!! It seems that they will cocoon in a lot of unusual places and not necessarily in food items. I've had a hard time getting rid of them in the past, but this company has really good cupboard pantry moth traps:

http://www.gardensalive.com/

Do try them if the buggers come back!

Blessings,
the other Tammy :-)

Yarnhog said...

I had my own moth scare a few weeks back--I was not nearly as circumspect about it as you. (You can read my hysterical rantings in my blog archive, if you're so inclined.) I'm glad they were pantry moths, not wool moths. Food I can live without--wool, not so much!

Charity said...

Moths are just plain scary. Glad it wasn't your stash, though!

I definitely agree you deserve applause for sticking with Moss stitch. It's one of my favourite stitches, but I hate knitting it!