Gardeners and yarn friends-- help!

[nannerl]

While picking through the apartment yesterday we discovered that a box of stuff I brought from Denver was pretty much submerged. In it were my digital/Bluetooth garden data sensor and <gulp> my almost finished crocheted baby blanket I was making for a friend of mine.

The sensor I thought I could replace, but wouldn't you know, they are out of production. Does anyone have a water/sun/nutrient gizmo they could point me to? The one I lost was a fancy thing that sent the data to my phone and tracked over time (and recommended plants!), but I just need something I can survey my new yard with to try and find the best place for a vegetable garden.

The baby blanket. Gah!! The crochet bag was half submerged in flood water. Can't bleach it and don't want to tumble dry it. Also have half a dozen balls of yarn that were soaked. Yarn is a cotton/acrylic blend that can be washed. Flood cleanup site recommends washing in a full washing machine of water with detergent and pinesol (to disinfect) and dry in the sun. Should I soak the yarn balls and then unwind them to let them dry?

Honestly I don't even want to give the blanket away anymore-- I don't think a blanket that went through a flood should be anywhere near a baby. But it was so much work-- maybe I could salvage part of it for something?

[mala]

Unless the balls of yarn are something special I would toss it. If you send them through the washing machine they're going to get hopelessly tangled. In your situation I'd rather replace than salvage.

As for the blanket... I dunno, I'd feel squiggy about gifting it too. I'd wash it and maybe try to turn it into a pillow case for an accent pillow in your home? That's an option at least.

[nannerl]

Sept 3, 2017 20:15:47 GMT -5 mala said:

Unless the balls of yarn are something special I would toss it. If you send them through the washing machine they're going to get hopelessly tangled. In your situation I'd rather replace than salvage.

As for the blanket... I dunno, I'd feel squiggy about gifting it too. I'd wash it and maybe try to turn it into a pillow case for an accent pillow in your home? That's an option at least.

So, I had to move fast to try and salvage what I could, so here's what ended up happening. I put everything (balls, squares, and yarn balls) into a sink of warm water with detergent, oxy clean, and lemon Lysol. I let them soak about an hour (with some squeezing) then squeezed out the whole mess, put the balls in a laundry bag, and transferred everything into a general wash cycle with no soap to rinse and spin. After it finished, I spread the blanket out in the sun for some UV rays, and picked apart and hanked the balls of wet yarn so it could dry. So far so good. The salvaged yarn will make fine practice scrap or maybe I could use it for test squares that would later be scrubbers, and I'm going to unjoin the blanket, save the granny squares, and maybe turn it into a shopping bag :-)

[onehitwonder]

I know you already washed, but if you think you need to rewash or if there is a lingering smell, try soaking or washing with Borax. After Katrina, I used it on everything from clothes to curtains and it worked great. That smell seemed to soak into everything, even if it wasn't wet and the Borax did the trick. It can also be used as a surface cleaner if you just want to wipe down your belongings. I'm glad that your family is okay.