Wicked Wool

Freaking moths.

I'm still dealing with the drama of the moths.  Out of paranoia, I decided to empty the bedroom completely in order to make sure that every speck of dust was eradicated.  First, I packed up all of the yarn and wool.  Luckily, I'm not a complete slacker/idiot and I had two 30 gallon bins that were properly stored and therefore not affected.  All other yarn in the room was packed into trash bags and put on the back porch until I could deal with it.  I think I pulled about 50 lbs of wool out of the room.

At this point, I began freaking out.  The best way I knew of to kill moths was to do the freeze, thaw, repeat process, and my freezer is tiny.  If I wanted to keep ice and food in my freezer, it would take me months to treat all of this crap.    Fortunately, I turned to Ravelry where I was told that you can use dry ice to kill the evil little bugs. 

I bought a few more Rubbermaid tubs at Target and dry ice at the grocery store.  The article with the information on fumigation suggested that you need 1-1/2 lbs of dry ice to fumigate a 30 gallon bag of wool.  I started with 1/2 lb per 18 gallon tub of wool.  I wasn't able to find many reports of dry ice use from other knitters, so I was somewhat concerned that the wool might be damaged if it touched the ice.  I decided to put yarn that I'm not in love with directly on top of the ice just to be safe.

After a few hours, there didn't seem to be enough in the way of CO2, so I threw another 1/2 lb in each tub.  The ice wasn't melting much either.  I dragged all of the tubs into the living room so the ice would melt faster and duct tapped around the tubs to seal them better (the lids on these things suck more than I thought).

Then, on Wednesday, Mother Nature gave us a bit of a cold front.  The temperature dropped down to 10 below, so I put the tubs back outside just in case.  There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to moths.

I've began unpacking the wool this evening.  I planned to rewash everything in Kookaburra wool wash, but now I'm starting to rethink that.  Washing all of this wool is going to be a massive pain in the ass and it doesn't seem entirely necessary.  The wool wasn't harmed by the dry ice at all, so I think I'll be fine if I just start packing everything up into freezer bags.

Unfortunately, I won't know if this method was effective until some time has passed.  I'm going to be cautious with how the wool is packed and inspect it pretty regularly to make sure things still look ok.  If I'm still moth free in a few months, I guess it worked.  I really hope it does because the dry ice seems like the easiest way to deal with this much wool.