The Lowly Weevil – Second in a series of bug gloves

Weevil fingerless bug gloves

The first bug glove that I designed was a Stag beetle. That design was not a huge challenge because of course I like them. Big, shiny with cool antler-like mandibles hanging out in forests, what’s not to like? For the second bug glove design I thought I would try moving out of my comfort zone and do an insect that I didn’t like so much. Out of the hundreds of thousands of bugs out there what would be next? I quickly ruled out centipedes (although not actually an insect). For whatever reason they just give me the heebie-jeebies. Maybe someday but not yet. There are so many disquieting and less than lovable bugs out there to choose from, I was sure I could find a suitable candidate that wouldn't give me nightmares while working through the design process.

I grew up in the country so Earwigs, Silverfish, Ants, Weevils, Moths and Mice were the mortal enemies of my mother in the great pantry battle. Everything brought home from the grocery store like cereal, pasta, and rice were immediately removed from their inferior packaging and safely stored in airtight plastic containers and glass jars. Even then, on occasion there would be a bag of flour that had seemed fine that would sprout a colony of weevils. My exasperated and slightly disgusted mother would chuck the flour outside onto the compost pile, roll up her sleeves and reinforce the pantry battle lines with soap and borax. She didn’t hate bugs, they were just not welcome in the house and definitely not anywhere near the inner sanctum of the pantry.  As a kid I was perfectly content knowing that I would not be eating weevils in my pancakes, but they didn’t wig me out like they did my mother.  Maybe its because they were contained and I was secure in the knowledge that my mother had banished them to the great outdoors. Why would they come back? They were happily continuing to munch on flour, just outside, unlike the silverfish and earwigs sneaking in the dark through the tiniest of cracks, always testing the boundaries.

Purple and blue Weevil fingerless bug gloves in a pine tree

Technology has come a long way and commercial flours are heat treated before being sold so the emergence of weevils in pantries is increasingly rare. I know I have not seen a weevil in decades, although I still store all my dry goods in sealed containers.  Apparently there are over 90,000 species of weevils out there – they could be anywhere, they could look like anything. Scanning through the internet, looking for a pleasant looking weevil took some time, but I did find one that was blue with a long wiggly nose thing and white rings. Rings are hard to knit in a small motif so I decided to embroider them instead after I finished knitting. I have to say the result came out better than I expected and with over 90,000 kinds of weevils you could make them any colour you want and there might be real ones crawling around in the real world. I'm still not a fan of Weevils but I don't mind them so much on a pair of fingerless bug gloves.