Spinning and socks

A friend of mine recently commissioned a scarf from me. She gave me the choice of yarn, after I had given her a bunch of options. One option was for me to spin my own fiber.

So she wanted a cream scarf with some purple. The purple I have leftover from a set of wrist warmers and hat I made her that this scarf is supposed to match. And I figured it might be cheaper to spin the yarn. So I drafted from the fold in order to get a very thin yarn. First I tried it out on some light blue merino I had, and then when I was satisfied with the results, I started on the alpaca.

It turned out I spun really thin, so I tried my hand at Navajo plying. (Also because I didn't want to spin another bobbin at that moment.) This was the result:

It looks like real yarn! This is the first time I'll be knitting with my own hand-plied yarn (unless you count non-plied one-ply yarn as "hand-plied"). I have to wait to knit until my friend tells me specifically what type of pattern she wants me to use.

I also decided to try making a sock. I've never made one before, and a friend gave me the pattern for a baby sock. Since it's such a quick project, it wouldn't be such a big deal if I needed to restart. Here's the sock.
I messed up in 2 places where I misread directions, but both were minor enough mistakes that I kept going. Now I have to make the second, but since I'm not even sure if I'm giving it to the person who i think I'm giving it to, I can wait until I've made myself my clapotis and my llama scarf (since it's freezing in Cambridge right now.)

My self-indulgent knitting spree is called "Operation Warm Up The Knitter of Shiny Things."