Sock yarn - self striping!

I had a great time spinning this yarn for socks. First, I purchased some roving in yellow, pink and red from my local yarn store. I bought one ounce of each color. Then, I separated each hunk of roving in half, and then in half again, and arranged it like this - red, pink, yellow, red, pink, yellow, yellow, pink, red, yellow, pink, red - and this is the order in which I spun it. I didn't weigh it or anything, just separated it by "eyeballing" it. I did it this way in hopes of some irregularity because I want lots and lots of "barberpoling."

Then, I spun it all, and then Andean Plied it. This is what you see above - the Andean Plying bracelet on my old arm. I'm so much more bothered by the signs of ageing on my arms than on my face - I have to LOOK at my arms all day long, but I don't ever have to look at my face, lol. I pity those of you who do...

I digress...

My plan was to have yarn which ended up sort of self striping going from red to pink to yellow to red to pink to yellow, with stretches of barberpoling in between the solid colors.

In this wonky photo, you can sort of see, if you really use your imagination (lol) the parts which are pink/red and in the photo, I'm plying two pink strands. You'll just have to believe me when I tell you that way down deep, it's all red.

Next, after the pink came the pink/yellow, then the yellow...

then the yellow/red, followed by all red...

...then red/pink, then...oops. It never made it to pink! There was a really long patch of red/pink which went straight to pink/yellow, and then it ended with solid yellow, yay. When Andean plying, what you end up at the very *end* of the two-ply is what was in the center of the original ball of singles. I'm completely happy with this yarn, even though it missed a "solid" stripe. Serendipity!!!

I just love this yarn! It makes me very happy.

I love red and pink together! I love yellow and pink together! I'm not completely jazzed about red and yellow together, but it's OK.

So, that was one of my goals with this spinning project- to spin yarn with spaces of solid color, interspersed with spaces of barpoling. The other goals were to knit a pair of socks on double points (which I've never done before, being a two at once on a circ sort of gal) and to knit at a gauge of 10 stitches per inch. I started out on a set of Lantern Moon needles at size "0." This was WAY too large and my gauge is something like 7 stitches per inch.

This is what you see here. I included this photo to show you my latest in throw-the-knitting-into-the-backpack attire, lol.


See how handy? It works great.

However, since these photos were taken, I've ripped out and re-knitted these socks so many times that I got sick of the project and put it away until I can calm down about the whole thing.

I found some dpns which are sooooo small, and I completely over shot the mark, knitting at 14 stitches per inch, which is way too small for this gauge of yarn. RRRRRIP.

So, I ordered a variety of teeny little dpn needles from Spinblessing.com, one of the most friendly and accomodating online sellers, by the way, and worked my way through the batch until I found a set which would give me the proper gauge.

Then I put it all aside until I can work up the courage to RIP it all out again and start afresh. Meanwhile, I tried to make a set of circulars out of doll needles and guitar wire because only an idiot would knit an entire pair of socks on dpns I'M ONLY KIDDING, lol.

One thing I've discovered is that I really really really hate dpns!!! I've never knit a sock, or any other tubular project, with them and golly, now I *know* why magic looping was invented, lol.

Next, I'm going to spin up the wool for the other sock, but I'm going to use an as yet undertermined striping pattern and then decide whether or not to continue with this silly dpn rule or go back to my beloved circs. Of course the fact that circs of the tinyness I need don't exist is posing quite the problem... hmmm...