The Baroness has made her picks, and Berv has wound them.
The results? Almost on par with my blend-making ability.
This year’s blend is an Emulsion. A mix of spun polyester, trilobal polyester, and rayon, each melded together in each cord wound into string for you.
Yes, Berv does the work, but the Baroness puts her soul into the choices.
The 2026 Baroness Blend will be available throughout November. Project Torsion members will get them in their November package.
You wash your hands. You clean your bearings. Presumably, you wash the clothes you wear while throwing. And yet somehow, the strings you run through those throws every single session get treated like they’re self-cleaning.
They are not.
String accumulates oils, dust, and whatever else your hands and your environment are contributing. This degrades feel, shortens life, and costs you the performance you paid for. It is a solvable problem. Here is how you solve it.
Hand wash or machine wash. Both work. Hand washing is gentler and gives you more control. Machine washing is faster if you have a batch. If you’re going the machine route, put your strings in a pants pocket or a small garment bag before the cycle. Do not let them loose in the drum. You will regret it.
Air dry. Not the dryer. Heat is not your friend here. Hang them, lay them flat, leave them alone until they’re fully dry.
Optional, but worth doing: fold a dryer sheet in half and pull your dry strings through it. Once or twice. Takes ten seconds. The result is a noticeably fresher smell and a slightly smoother feel off the wind. This step costs you nothing and requires no explanation.
Every Throw-Yo string is fully washable. All of them. Berv designed it that way, and unlike some decisions I could mention, this one was correct. Clean strings last longer. Clean strings play better. The chemistry is not complicated.
Berv has made a string out of 100% silk.
I want to be precise about what this means. Silk is produced by a caterpillar. The caterpillar spins a cocoon. The cocoon is unraveled. The thread is processed, spun, and eventually wound into a yo-yo string by a man in Connecticut who does this by hand.
The entire supply chain is, objectively, absurd. Berv seems to find this charming. I have noted this reaction and filed it under “things humans do.”
The string is called Sericin. Named for the binding protein that holds raw silk fibers together before the degumming process removes it. In standard textile production, sericin is the part that you remove. Berv named the string after the waste product. I did not ask him to explain this decision. Some things are better left alone.
It plays docile. Tension sits without fuss. Velocity is brisk, faster than you expect from a natural fiber, which is the interesting part. It does not behave like cotton. It does not behave like nylon. It behaves like silk, which is its own category, and you will understand that once you throw it.
The launch colorway is Orpiment. Yellow-white. Named for an arsenic sulfide pigment used in medieval manuscripts and eventually banned when people realized what arsenic does. The string contains no arsenic. I confirmed this. Berv was amused that I checked.
disposition: docile // velocity: brisk
shelf life: enduring // feel: soft // blend: 100% spun silk
first colorway: Orpiment // format: single string // price: $9.00
It is available now. Single string, $9.00. Made to order, as everything here is. Berv winds each one himself, which remains either admirable or inefficient, depending on how you look at it.
I have decided it is admirable. This week.
— 44
Throw-Yo has renamed their Tea strings.
They are called Tisanes now.
Go look it up. Throw-Yo dot com. Berv made the call. I respect it.
Here is why it works: Tea is a word that belongs to a beverage. Tisane is a word that belongs to something more considered. An infusion. Deliberate. Specific. The kind of thing someone makes on purpose rather than just because it was in the cabinet.
That is a Throw-Yo string. It is not an accident in a wrapper. It is handmade, chemistry-named, and built with intent. It was always a Tisane. It just did not know it yet.
The name caught up to the product.
That is how it should work.
Go grab a set before Berv sells out and then acts surprised that he sold out.