The Truth about Natural Fibres

For several years now I have been on a mission to only use natural fibres in my crafting. With several options of both plant and animal fibres with a wide range of properties there is a natural fibre for every use. These fibres are renewable, we can literally grow more of them every day, yet unlike plastic based fibres they can decompose once their use has ended. Not to mention that even the act of washing these fibres is better for the environment as washing plastic based fibres can leak microplastics.

For several years now, since I switched to these fibres I thought that there really was no downside to these fibres.

Then I came back from holiday, I had been upgrading my craft room and so my craft supplies were scattered, half packed, half unpacked. I went to my craft room to continue organising my way to the perfect haven of craft and relaxation.

Whilst rearranging some shelving I pulled down a basket of combed top I had been spinning. As I looked down at the basket I saw a pool of dust at the bottom, the same colour as the Shetland wool. I knew immediately that something was very wrong. I lifted the fibre gently to find something I had never considered possible in the UK, much less my chilly Scotland where I had been living for a few years at this point.

Unfortunately, it was true. My beautiful craft room that I had been so lucky to have, had been infested by wool moths, or carpet beetles. I wasn't entirely sure but I knew I had some sort of fibre eating bug on my hands. I also knew that after several years of switching to natural fibres I had a decent amount of wool in my stash.

The race was on to see what had been affected, what could be saved and what was a write -off. I lost a whole cone of British 4ply, two skeins of arran weight locally dyed yarn, and all of my straight from Shetland combed top.

I also chose to take the remaining yarn that didn't show any signs of infestation and bag them in zip lock bags and freeze them. A time consuming endeavour with just one small domestic freezer.

I wasn't as upset as I would have thought I'd be, but it was a pretty devasting blow to my crafting. I'd lost not only the yarn but the projects I'd had in mind along the way. Worse though was coming to terms with the fact that my WIP's were not indefinitely safe, that my stash was not indefinitely safe just because I'd brought home the yarn or wool. The fibre that I'd been advocating for, for three years could be taken away in a very short period of time.

Bugs can eat through these fibres leaving nothing but dust behind. At first I was horrified, I also felt incredibly silly for not considering this sooner. Then I had another thought, maybe this is the point. Maybe in a world full of forever chemicals, and plastics that take hundreds of years to decompose we need more materials that can be turned to dust by the ecosystem they were made in.

So my lessons learnt; keep a smaller stash, buying only what I need for the project(s) I'm working on is more sustainable and more space conscious. Keep less WIP's, it can be hard but it's important to not keep too many projects on the back burner. Most importantly, wool and natural fibres deserve respect, they require more care than acrylic fibres but they are much better for the environment.