Argh. Right my google searches have been useless, can anyone point me to a guide (internet or book) that will show me the various infestations (or signs of infestation) that fleece and fibre can have? I'll post below describing the situation in case anyone can help.
I was gifted some fibre from the lovely Ina a few weeks ago, which I popped in a warm upstairs room until after this surgery. Feeling better I had a knit and knatter
yesterday and showed them to Welshcob, but noticed 2 felt slightly damp. I wasn't sure if it was the warmth of the room evaporating wetness in them which then condensed inside the plastic bags or not. I laid them out on towels, turned the radiator up and stuck the dehumidifier on. This evening went to check and both looked lovely and fine. I'm very excited to play with them
. I popped them into old pillowcases to prevent any evaporation/condensation occurring again.
I thought I should probably do the same to the other two bags. I opened the cashmere, which were in small carrier bags, and started transferring to a pillowcase. I noticed lots of crumbly things which I thought might have been old plant matter (the fibre is quite old). I then started noticing a few holes, like if you took the stick out of candyfloss. I followed them to find more crumbly things and started to get suspicious. I started to shake each bag of fibre out over a towel before transferring to pillow case. Then I got to the last few bags and found a larvae. Cream coloured with a brown head. In all I found about 6. All the cashmere is now in a pillowcase in another room and I'm about to go and hoover the room they had been in and wash all the towels I used at 60C. Is there anything else I can do.
Is the cashmere lost? I assume that something has laid eggs in there. The largest larvae was about 2cm when stretched out so they may have hatched when I put them in the warm room but my entomology is poor! I know they aren't blowfly larvae and they look like moth larvae from my google hunt. The crumbly things I found really did look long dead though.
I didn't see anything similar at all with the fleeces, so I am hoping they are clear, but would be good to look closer with an idea of things to look for. Everything I have read so far has talked about skirting for poor quality fibre, new growth etc, not found anything about infestations.
Thank you for any help!
Dans - who isn't sure her head was quite up to this today