Operation Yarn Sausage

As mentioned here, I want to knit a shawl-sized Gothic Leaf out of Euroflax sport weight linen. Online advice culled from Sivia Harding's blog and Knitter's Review said to wash the yarn first, so yesterday I did. Please join me as we walk through Operation Yarn Sausage.

1. Assembled tools - yarn, size 10 crochet cotton and nylons.

2. First I unwound the hanks and gave them a gentle shake to loosen them up. I then placed eight figure eight-shaped ties around them to keep tangling to a minimum during the washing process.

3. Yarn ready for stuffing.

4. Some online knitters recommended washing the linen in mesh bags. I, however, 1) don't have mesh bags, and 2) was concerned about tangling, so I followed Jayne and Mary's recommendation and used nylons. I folded the hanks in half, and put each one in a cut down nylon. I snugged the yarn down into the toe and cinched a knot.

5. Into the washer we go. I set my washer on the smallest load/hottest water setting, added two tablespoons of Eucalan and tossed in the sausages.

6. Thirty minutes later I pulled them out and popped them into the dryer, which was also set to the hottest setting.

7. I ran them through the dryer twice. I took them out and discovered they were still damp. At this point I got bored with the process, unwound the hanks and hung them up to dry. Twenty four hours later they're still damp, so I've just cut off the crochet thread ties, shaken the hanks out and hung them up outside in the shade to finish drying.

Thoughts: Linen is a lovely fiber, but soft isn't an adjective for it until it's well worn. Even so, based on the online comments I read, my expectation was that the washed yarn would soften up considerably. Well, it didn't. It did loosen up a little, however, and feels less slick. After washing, the yarn is shedding fuzzies, but these are easy to remove. The color remains vividly aubergine.

The process was easy and liberating in the way cutting steeks must be liberating: washing non-acrylic/superwash yarn in the washing machine on the hot setting? And drying it in the drying machine on the hot setting? Taboo busting.

Would I pre-wash linen yarn again? Sure. If/when it happens, I'll probably run through the entire process twice, to see if that elusive softness people were talking about occurs.

And as soon as this yarn dries, I'll ball her up and get cracking on my shawl. I'll let you know how the yarn works out then.