Sunday started like most other Sundays… get up, have breakfast and tea, and decide what to do with the day. This Sunday The Husband and I were going to go to Macy’s to look at watches for him, head to Target to get me new workout clothes, and come home by way of Safeway to get whole wheat egg noodles. But this Sunday had other plans…

I went into my fiber room to put away my newest yarn acquisition (two skeins of Cherry Tree Hill Possum Lace in Blueberry Hill and a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Birches) in my fiber room. I don’t know what made me go across the room and fuss with the two test skeins (from two fo my fleeces) that were sitting atop the bookcase in front of the window, but I did… and I am glad I did…

I picked up the small white skein I made to sample my Southdown Babydoll fleece… foddled it a little… turned it over… WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

There was a bug… on my wool! Sonofabitch! (Insert a lot more cursing here.)

I quickly check the other wooly items sitting inches away from this one… no other buggies. I could only think of removing the buggie from my fiber room, so I took it to the kitchen. Thinking only the worst, I prepared a destroy the small skein while mentally running through the work ahead of me. The Husband smooshed the buggie (it fell off of the skein and I wanted to make sure it died), and applied some lamp oil to the wool, which was then taken outside and set alight in the firepit. Boy, did it burn…

By now I was started to feel sick to my stomach… a buggie in my stash… I began to prepare myself mentally for the idea of having to throw out wool… my wool. No wonder I felt sick to my stomach.

We still had errands to run, but The Husband suggested we make a stop at Home Depot where my LYS owner works to see if she was still there. We found her in her dept and she said she’d be with us as soon as she was done with a customer. She comes over and asks what’s up. I answer, “I found something eating my wool.” And here is why I love my LYS owner… she looked properly horrified, then proceeded to ask me what it looked like. A tiny, fuzzy buggie. Without missing a beat she informs me it’s a carpet beetle. She then starts going through what I need to do… go home, check everything, see any buggies — kill them. She mentioned freezing, but we have a very small freezer (we’re now looking at getting a small chest freezer for yarn and food). She then tells us we should be able to find no-pest strips at OSH, and asks if we can meet her at the yarn store in about an hour; she has mothcakes that don’t smell too bad, and they’re good for carpet beetles, too.

I got through most of my stash Sunday night, and put the perfumed mothcake in place as well as the no-pest strip. No buggies were found in my yarn, and my fleeces look alright as well. I did find 2 cast skins (carpet beetle larva molt) — one in a box of rug yarn and one on a wool sweater that was hanging in the closet (although I couldn’t find any holes). I’ve only seen (I think) 2 live larvae in the whole apartment — the one eating my wool, and one in our bedroom a few weeks before.

I think what I found is a Varied Carpet Beetle (the picture at this site looks almost exactly like what I found… when I said fuzzy, I meant it). Thankfully, I also think that since I only found the one, I don’t have to worry about an infestation at this point. I am going to check my stash again in a few weeks to make sure. I’m definitely going to have to get more serious about the vaccuming though.

And since I wasn’t on edge enough already, I saw a moth in my fiber room last night when I was finishing up with the last of my fleeces… smooshed that sucker real good, but unfortunately, I didn’t get a good look at him. I’m not sure if he flew in from the other room or if he flew out of the plastic bag I had just opened. So, that fleece has been put back in the bathroom, and will get checked again in a week.

Just thinking about all this… I could use a hard drink…