The big news is that I have found clothes moths in the house. The warm weather brought out a lot of moths of all sorts and so I renewed my sticky moth traps and found that I caught three small clothes moths almost immediately. Here they are:
So then I decided that I should turn out the places where I store wool and woolly things which turns out to be more than I’d bargained for. There are garments – current and old, yarn in stash, yarn in ongoing knitting, cashmere, alpaca and wool tops for spinning, and wool blankets – knitted, crocheted and woven, Not to mention a couple of suits and jackets.
First to get opened up was a trunk full of old garments that I keep, a personal archive. There’s a mixture from things I made years ago to things I bought and have never worn to outfits from Trent Polytechnic back in the 1980 s.
Here are some of them:
This is an Orenburg shawl, brought back for me from the USSR as it then was by a friend who’s a research physicist, so he know lots of Russians and used to go there quite a lot. It was bought in St Petersburg and is now at the dry cleaner’s.
A Shetland scarf, bought there on a visit in the 1992. Also at the dry cleaner’s right now.
A rather nice hat, hand knitted. The label inside says it’s from Lithuania but I’m not sure how I came by it … it has been hand washed.
A Shetland tam, bought there.
Hand spun and hand knitted by me, Jacob’s wool scarf, a long time ago
Ethnic socks, think they might have come from Nepal when I visited in 1995
A cotton bag to put handkerchiefs in, hand knitted in Zimbabwe and brought back by me in the 1990s.
The Urban Jumper. My design, machine knitted in glorious synthetics. Worn by my partner in the 1980s
My hand knitting, inspired by the Danish book, Everybody’s Knitting. 
It started out life as a dress, and ended up as a skirt and top for my daughter aged about 7 at the time. All wool was unravelled from other garments bought in charity shops.
A cardigan designed and knitted by a Japanese company from when I worked with Japanese knitwear producers.
My sweater drawer has been taken wholesale to the dry cleaner who are giving me a good discount on bulk, including lace items that I really don’t want to have to block and quite a lot of cashmere.
The yarn has gone into the freezer for a while. Information on the web varies on the length of time things should stay there, from 2 days (Vogue magazine UK) to a week. I have been told 3 weeks so who knows what the correct time is? (If you think you know, please tell me pronto!).
Other items have been handwashed and are now ready to go back in the trunk, all sprayed inside with moth killer spray and new newspaper.
And then of course, there’s the big question – why keep most of this stuff at all?
Knitting gloves 