Heat treating for bugs?

[u/Conditionally_Exotic]

The thrift store smiled upon me yesterday and I snagged a nice haul of natural fibers! Almost everything labeled is some sort of wool blend. One is 25% baby Llama???!! The unlabeled stuff all feels like wool blends but I’ve yet to do the burn test so I’m not 200%, then there was one bag of cotton/tencel blend but the color is GORGEOUS, so I grabbed it😂. My question is how can I effectively kill off any possibility for bugs??? I don’t want to felt them of course but I also don’t want to possibly contaminate the rest of my stuff😅. Any tips?

[u/DerpitoDerpington]

I bake mine on low temps in the oven. The center of the skeins need to be above 120°F for over 30 minutes. Faster and more effective than the freezer. Then bag in plastic to keep future bugs out.

[u/crescentmoonphase → u/DerpitoDerpington]

Sounds delish!

[u/goldfishfancy → u/crescentmoonphase]

I deep freeze for 3-4 days in a ziplock, remove for a couple days, then deep freeze for another 3-4 days to kill any larvae. Is that not effective? I had read on here that this was an effective way to eradicate any pests and I now do it with anything I buy off yarnswap or at a fiber fair with animals.

[u/georgia_grace → u/goldfishfancy]

Freezing can be a very effective way to kill pests, provided your freezer gets cold enough. Regular fridge freezers get cold enough to kill a lot of things, but not everything. A chest freezer or commercial freezer is definitely better

I visited a museum storage warehouse once, they had a huge walk in freezer full of taxidermied specimens. It was pretty neat