Finished Spindlers June challenge yarn: Undercover

I finished my June challenge yarn for the Spindlers group on Ravelry!  To summarize, the theme was "Undercover" and I immediately thought of superheroes & supervillains, which led me to think of the X-men's Mystique as the ultimate undercover character.

After plying this yarn, I finished it fairly harshly.  I soaked it in hot, soapy water, then in cold water, then back in hot water, and finally, a last swish in cold water.  I pressed out as much water as I could, thwacked it heartily against a wall several times, then hung it up to dry.  The finishing treatment really fluffed up the yarn and brought out the halo of the mohair in the mix.  The final yarn is light with a nice bounce to it.  It's not the fanciest or most consistent yarn I've ever made, but I like it and love that it gave me a good opportunity to try a new plying technique. 

The final Mystique inspired yarn:

85% wool, 15% mohair blend (mill ends)
2-ply, long-draw drafting style
16 g/0.57 ounces, 49 yards, fingering weight

In other news, after plying my yarn yesterday, I caught up on some housework (okay, I'll be honest... I scratched the surface of my backlog of housework) and I also worked on harvesting some fruit from the backyard.  I only got a handful of strawberries, but I picked a whopping 12 pounds of cherries:

I love the color of cherries.  I need to make a mental note to figure out how to dye fiber with this sour cherry color inspiration.  Setting up my home dye lab is on my fiber to-do list in the "soon" category.  I hope that translates into sometime this summer.

In the meantime, though, I will be spending a few hours today in cherry heaven... or hell, depending on how long it takes me to process all of the cherries.