Dirty Jobs

I'm not usually the "Spring Cleaning" type, mostly because I tend to purge old stuff throughout the year... I mean, if we're not using it I don't see the point of keeping it around. Every few months, I go through the house with a box for Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul and find the toys that aren't being played with and go through the clothes to see if there's anything that we no longer need or can't see wearing in the foreseeable future.

I was doing just this, when I opened my closet with the alpaca in it and decided it was time to do something about it. I'd had it in there for months and now that I'm not afraid of spinning it I wanted it cleaned. If you remember my experience with trying to clean my own wool, you'll understand why I didn't want to bother with this myself - Instead, I scooted on over to Gretchen's Wool Mill to have it processed. I had 5 bags full of alpaca and llama.... beautiful colors; red, grey, black, and white. I got them free from someone who stopped by the guild one night (I think you may know where this is going, but honestly... they looked really good at the time.) I know Gretchen pretty well - we spin together at Valley Spinners and our small churches work together for community ministries. I drove up to her serene little farm, and toted my bags over to her shop so we could weigh them and take a good look at them.

Gretchen opened the first bag and we both gasped in horror... (actually, I sort of toppled backward and shrieked since we were both bending down anticipating the feel of glorious fiber.) MOTHS! Moth eggs, moth larvae, moths crawling all over the place... the bag of white was completely infested. EWWWWWW! All kinds of things went through my head at that moment - "OMG, I can't believe I brought moths into Gretchen's wool mill!!!!" and "Oh that is so gross! How long have these been like this?" and "AAAAGGGGHHHH! NOoooooo, these were in there with my beautiful carded wool batts! I've got to get out of here and clean that closet!"

Gretchen calmly tied the bag back up and handed it to me saying, "Well, we can't do anything with that one... Let's look at the others." Four out of the five bags were infested... Opening each one produced much the same response. It was so disgusting!

The clean one (the smallest one) was the grey alpaca fiber (Gretchen called it "blue".) I had planned to only have the fleeces cleaned because there was so much of it, but since there was only the one I told her to go ahead and card it too. Sigh. The rest is going to the dump... That will teach me to take free alpaca from the trunk of somebody's car!

Anyway, I can't believe how gracious Gretchen was about it... I mean if someone brought big moth-infested bags onto your farm, wouldn't you chase them out screaming "How could you?!!! Get out of here, you filthy moth-breeder!" But she could see how disappointed and sorry I was as I sadly loaded my moth-ridden bags into the car (holding them away from my body,) and she told me she'd call me when my "blue" alpaca was ready. Thanks, Gretchen - you are a true friend.

When I got home, I left those nasty bags outside for Phil to take to the dump and immediately ran upstairs to take a shower. I swear, I could feel those moths on me - ick! Later, I worked up the nerve to tackle the closet. Unrolling those batts was a skin-crawling experience only because I kept imagining the discovery of more moths - But apparently they favored the alpaca, because the wool was completely clean. Phew! After checking and rebagging all that wool and pulling everything else out of the closet, I vaccuumed it out and used Lysol to disinfect the walls and carpet. Hopefully that should dispatch any remnants that may have been left by those creepy temporary inhabitants. This has turned out to be a week of deep-cleaning for me because our church had our annual clean-up (my job was to disinfect all the toys in the toddler room - with all the sickness going around, I was more than happy to do this,) and I spent quite a bit of time earlier in the week weeding our front yard. For the rest of today I'll be cleaning up clutter because tomorrow will be day of rest... I'm having some knitting and spinning friends over for a bit of a retreat, and Phil's taking the kids to Granny Bee's house - I can't wait!

Here's what I've been working on this week, aside from the socks...This purse, nicknamed "Bane of my Existance," is ready to be felted once again. I've cut it apart, re-stitched it into something sort of resembling a purse and needle-felted the grapes which I think turned out quite nicely. I'm hoping re-felting this baby will seal the seams shut but still allow me to beat it into submission stretch it out a bit so it will actually hold something other than a cell phone. We'll see.

In other news, my second shipment of the Twilight Sock Club has arrived!

Oh, how I love le bleu! I'll be racing now to finish the red...