Thursday, January 17, 2013

because I need a new project

The yarn I bought finally arrived, and, boy, does it ever reek. I knew it would, though. The woman I bought it from warned me that it had been stored in mothballs. Initially, I thought that was a deal-breaker, but, having used the yarn before, I knew it would be perfect for a new project I have in mind. Internet searches had already informed me that the yarn has been discontinued, so when the seller told me she had turned up another skein of yarn that she would include for the same price, that clinched the sale.

It took forever for the yarn to get here, but that is another story. Now that it has, I have to deal with the smell. Apparently some people actually like the smell of mothballs. I am not one of them. After opening the package, I immediately placed the box and its contents on the glider on the back porch. It was 38
° degrees outside and raining, but the yarn spent the rest of the day and that night out on the porch. I couldn't have it in the house, after all. I brought it in the next morning, but it still smelled bad.

Next, I took it to the basement and loosely re-wound all the tightly-wound yarn cakes. It sat on an open shelf in the basement all day yesterday. It still smelled bad. Currently, the yarn is in a lidded plastic container with one of those room freshener cakes. This room freshener has been working for an entire large room in the basement, so I am hoping it will do that trick, but I am not optimistic.

I checked on Ravelry, of course, to see how other knitters have dealt with this problem. There is not a yarn-related issue I could possibly come up with that has not already been addressed on Ravelry. Suggestions ranged from ridiculous to way-more-work-than-I-would-ever-do. So now my plan is to try one thing and then another until a) the smell goes away or b) I get tired of trying and use the yarn anyway. I'll keep you posted. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

2 comments:

Ben said...

Of course I have a suggestion! Don't close them up, air them out. Put the yarn cakes up in the attic right away. Check on them when we start needing the air conditioner again. Maybe rewind them and put them back up there. Personally, I think it will take longer than a few months, and sensitive noses may always be able to detect the smell in that yarn. I believe it works like radioactive half-life: losing half it's stink every ## days, but never reaching zero stink. But I could be wrong, and you have nothing to lose by patient persistent trying.

anne mancine said...

Hm-m-m... The attic is not a bad idea, although it would be better in mid-summer when it is about 125° up there.

Also, remember how that smell leaked downstairs when we had to put mothballs in the attic on Grove Avenue to try and keep the squirrels out. That would be bad.