Preparing for Winter V

MingVase

I'm at 1000ft in southern Scotland, temp is 20C !

boultdj

Finding needles and wool out here to make bed socks and fingerless gloves.

Floss

Laura_Elsewhere said:

As it's so warm and dry this week, I thought I would get on with some autumn-cleaning, especially getting the heavy winter woollens washed so we can dry them on hangers in front of open windows while we can... 

...only to find a huge moth-hole bang in the middle of the front of My Intended's heavy winter jumper, argh... some extreme darning will be necessary...

Have you thoroughlycleaned out the cupboard, checked every other woolen item & frozen them all?

Laura_Elsewhere

@Floss, that would be nice in theory...  

But - no, I haven't, because the jumper wasn't in a cupboard but folded on top of a pile of stuff in the sitting-room for about 5 months, so it's the entire (exceedingly cluttered and overfilled) flat, not one cupboard.... and because I have boxes and boxes of fabric and two cupboards of yarn, so checking every item would take a long time... and because our tiny rented flat has a smaller-than-average fridge-freezer which is already stuffed full of food! 

But also, I did live for decades with appalling moth infestation, as my family's home has clothes-moth in the fabric of the building, happily multiplying in the fluff below the gappy floorboards, all that dust and fluff since 1882... it would need professional fumigation to sort the problem out. Every time I visit them, we have a flurry of moths here in our little flat a short while later...! When I lived there, I tried freezing things and it just didn't work, I'm afraid - I've read research saying a) domestic freezers don't freeze hard enough and b) you need to repeatedly freeze and thaw, as it's the thawing that bursts the cells of the eggs to kill them. 

We use Rentokil Insectrol spray, every few months, and this jumper is the first moth damage we've had in a couple of years. Frustrating, and a major repair challenge, but it's not a major problem in terms of indicating an infestation. I shall get my entire textile stocks out and shake and air well in the next few days, and next week I'll go through all our jumpers through in the bedroom, and we'll close all the windows and spray the place hard. 

I go to considerable lengths to be 'green' most of the time, but when it comes to clothes-moths, chemical armageddon is the only thing that works!

maryb

My sister is the most soft hearted creature you could imagine and spiders, wasps etc get released outside with tender care.  Moths, now!  Genghis Khan, shift over!

Laura_Elsewhere

@maryb - oh yes, we have very few spiders in our flat, but we keep a little plastic tub and a smooth card, specifically for carefully and gently capturing them for release outside; and wasps too, even a scarily gigantic nearly-black Queen I found by my bedside one day a few years ago, buzzing loudly inside an empty Coke can! (I popped a bag over the can and carried the increasingly-loud thing downstairs and out the back, put it down, let go and dashed back ten paces or so - the thing was huge!!!)

Moths, though... yep, I'm right up there with your sister, in our mothicidal tendencies!  

Laura_Elsewhere

3.5 pints of elderberry syrup now, and two more bags of berries in the freezer waiting to be taken off their stems and syruped; two pounds of damson cheese and nearly 1.5 lbs of damson jelly. 

Definitely feeling like I'm preparing for winter, even if it's t-shirt weather all day still! 

3secondmemory

maryb said:

My sister is the most soft hearted creature you could imagine and spiders, wasps etc get released outside with tender care.  Moths, now!  Genghis Khan, shift over!

Usually, if I go away for a couple of nights I do a little squirt of toilet duck down all the plug holes but I forgot this time and Came home to find a huge spider in the bath. 

I Pulled off a square of toilet paper thinking I could grab it with that but it was nearly the same size. 

I did manage to scoop it up and drop it, and the toilet paper out of the bathroom window ☺️

I don’t know why people squash them because then you have to clean up the mess and deal with the carcass

PipneyJane

@Floss and @Laura_Elsewhere, according to the “Moth Man” at the British Museum, to kill clothes moths by freezing, the garment would need to be frozen continuously for 2 weeks at -40C or a month at -30C.  A garment would need to be frozen for several months in a domestic freezer before moth eggs are killed.  (Please see The British Museum Membercast podcast, “Meet the Moth Man” from 17 June 2020 for the full interview.).

I call moths “enemies of wool” and attack accordingly.

- Pip. 

betony

3secondmemory said:

maryb said:

My sister is the most soft hearted creature you could imagine and spiders, wasps etc get released outside with tender care.  Moths, now!  Genghis Khan, shift over!

Usually, if I go away for a couple of nights I do a little squirt of toilet duck down all the plug holes but I forgot this time and Came home to find a huge spider in the bath. 

I Pulled off a square of toilet paper thinking I could grab it with that but it was nearly the same size. 

I did manage to scoop it up and drop it, and the toilet paper out of the bathroom window ☺️

I don’t know why people squash them because then you have to clean up the mess and deal with the carcass

It's a myth that spiders come in through plug holes. What happens is that they're having a lovely walk, probably humming a show-tune or something to themselves, along the edge of the bath and suddenly lose their footing (understandable, given all those legs) and slip down into the bath and then, because the sides of the bath are sheer and slippery, can't get out again. They have to wait, probably still humming, until someone comes along and gives them a leg or two out of the bath.