Cat Mad Crochet

I am not ashamed to say I have a stash. It started, as I think many of them do, as a few left over hanks, some gift yarn, and those yummy skeins you cannot leave behind when you see them.  

It has grown. This is natural for their species. I didn’t even have to feed it much as it seems to feed itself on sales, exciting yarns I know I will start next but don’t, trips to fiber festivals, and yet more gifts. As I work to contain its growing bulk, it is working at another goal altogether. It is trying to accomplish the delicate critical mass required among yarn hanks to achieve sentience. This is not a set amount of yarn. Sentience is determined by the stash itself as it grows and develops.

I knew my stash had attained sentience when it started calling to me. I went to straighten up a box or grab a single hank for a hat and came away, perhaps hours later, with several new projects in mind, a list of extra hanks I was going to have to have, and the need for a few days of free time in which to get everything in my arms onto hooks.  

My stash knows me. It has been studying me. Without me knowing, it has been guiding my purchases, filling in its own gaps and glutting itself on my favorite yarns. Sentient stashes are like that. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I just need to be ready to accept its offerings with a happy smile and a ready hook, knowing it has my best project making hours at heart. But I do need to confront it because it has a mortal enemy that evolved along with it. 

The moth. 

Moths are truly and horrifically evil. They eat what is not theirs in an attempt to propagate more of themselves in order to steal more of my precious stash from me. In my house, there were only a few moths haunting my stash from time to time. I didn’t lose much, just a bit of a hank here and there and some unspun fleece. This seemed small and manageable, though vaguely worrying.  

You must remember, though, that moths are overachievers and will not stop until they destroy your entire stash. Every gift, special find, no longer produced colorway that they can get their nasty little eggs onto will fall to their chewing ways. I must use up my stash in order to defeat the moths. 

I now consider using my stash as a stand against tyranny and evil. Bagging each new yarn in a structurally stable plastic bag is just the way I make new purchases feel safe and wanted now. Take that moths! 

For months, I thought the moths bumbling horrifically around my house came in on some unwashed spinning fleece that sat in a barn for a few weeks before we got it. I was so very wrong. It actually came in on some unspun fleece from a major seller. I say this because all of that fleece was attacked, even if it was in different rooms and containers. Other fleeces and yarns were attacked randomly and sporadically. It was like they were sampling new breeds, species, and spinning methods to determine their favorites. The moths seem to have no favorites, though, beyond readily available and unguarded. They are shameless.  

Once I caught the monsters at their game, I spent several weeks going through every bit of unworked fiber in my house. I got rid of what could not be salvaged and roasted what could be saved in the oven hoping to kill the eggs and caterpillars where they stood because where they stood was on MY fleece and yarn. They started this. They have forced my vegetarian hand to violence.  

I’ve now bagged everything in my stash, spun or unspun, into carefully checked and sealed plastic bags. I hear they cannot chew through plastic, and they have not evolved thumbs yet, so I think this will work for now. I wondered how fast they could develop thumbs though? It worries me late at night when I imagine I hear very quiet chewing.  

Interestingly, there were finished crochet items near where the fleece and fiber were stored. The moths did not touch those items. I would like to think that they saw the crochet as they flew by, stopped to appreciate the fine, handmade, quality work, and flew on, unable to destroy something so lovely. I know they are just opportunistic beasts who don’t think that much about what they eat, only where they can get more, but I can hope.

There was one crocheted item that had moth damage. It was a weird mushroom I made as an experiment. The chinchillas had made off with it, and Hannah found it in their stash. Stashes appear to be a catching thing in my house. There was moth damage, but the moths themselves, their casings, and their eggs were gone in a way that suggested they had, perhaps, received some deadly help in the matter. The chinchilla room is remarkably free of all bugs. We believe they were using the mushroom to lure unsuspecting moths to their doom. Bless those chinchillas and the work they do.  

So enjoy your stash. Pet it, love it, attend to it, and if moths ever reach your home, destroy them before they destroy what you love.