Over a couple days this past week I got around to washing my Barn2Yarn skeins to set the twist. Because the weather was not conducive to hanging the drippy skeins to dry outside, I did half one day, and half the next so I could hang them in our small shower. And now, for the final reveal of all the yarns together:
I am really very happy with them. They are imperfect by design, as well as by the nature of mixed batts. In contrast to my earliest handspun, which may have on the surface appeared to be of a similarly rough nature, these are of better quality. They are thick and thin, but don’t veer into cobweb thin at random spots. The yarn holds together, and I didn’t have trouble with any of it either when I wound it into skeins, or as it was hung to dry.
I also like how there are bit of each within at least one or two of the other skeins. The yellow can be found in the brown and in the orange skeins. The orange has some of the brown, etc… The purple, red, and white is the biggest outlier, though it still is connected – the white is in the yellow and brown, the purple in the other half of the batt it came from. I did feel like it was important to play around a bit with how they sit next to each other in different color orders:
I feel like I like how the yellow, orange, and brown ones hold together, with the purple/red/white as a splash of contrast. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do with them yet, but I have some ideas floating around in my head.
One thing which became apparent from the little photog session of these skeins is that Pippin is an incorrigible yarn thief of only some yarn. We certainly had a period of a few weeks when he was going after any and all skeins he could get his paws on (resulting in the removal of lower hanging skeins on the wall) because it was his new game. He is not a bad cat, but sometimes he is naughty as sh*t because he just thinks its fun. But I believe he has since matured into a thief of specific tastes and preferences.
He lounged near the yarn on the ironing board as you can see in the image above, but didn’t bother it. I left it out all day piled up at the end of the board, and while he slept snuggled up against it a couple times, he otherwise didn’t lay a paw on it. Now, my washing it in Eucalan has reduced, but not entirely removed, the sheepy smell it had. I had thought that the barn-sheep-animal smell was what he liked when he started stealing the ColourLabs yarn for the cat blanket. But he’s not interested in this handspun at all. On the other hand, he’s been quite obsessive about getting his fluffy paws on the blue and green Undercover Otter DK I’m using. It’s not safe for a moment if he’s around and awake. But it’s not sheepy at all.
So, I’m not sure what draws his interest. But I am beginning to suspect a preference for blue, and for Undercover Otter. I have no idea what’s in their dye/rinse water, or where they store their yarn. But he’d consistently run off with new skeins of their yarn in any color when my monthly subscription arrived. I also think there’s some preference for blue, because given multiple skeins/cakes accessible to him, he seems more likely to choose the blue. I know he’s stolen the blue fingering several times when it was in the bag with other fingerings, and now he’s picking the blue/green over the pink in the bag. I also recall that he took the blue or the rainbow (which had blue in it) ColorLab more often than the orange one.
Does this mean I’m going to suddenly trust him with my yarn and knitting? No. But it does mean some projects may be reasonably safe for a few minutes when set aside so I can do a quick chore, answer the door, etc…