Yarn, Sock Yarn, and Socks

I am going to do a quick run-down of some of the things I've completed in the last few weeks.

First up is skein of single-ply Polwarth in the colorway Dusty Books from Three Waters Farm.  I wanted to do something intentional with color when spinning this braid and this time I decided to spin a single-ply yarn.  I generally don't do this, but I received the Slow whorl for my Flatiron as a birthday gift, so that gave me a chance to play around using the lower ratios.  

The colors in this braid repeated 3 times, so I broke the braid up and lined up the color so it matched up, and then I spun each color at a time to keep a single progression in the color repeats from one end of the skein to the other.  You can't really see that when it is all wound up in a hank, but it will really shine once I use the yarn.  Right now I am thinking of using it as weft in a scarf.

On my Kiwi I spent all of February slowly spinning up the singles for another sock yarn.  The fiber was Bare Knit Picks Stroll that I dyed.  A few months ago I had spun another braid of the same fiber, but the resulting yarn was on the thick side and the yardage is probably too low to be able to get a pair of socks.  I will definitely be able to get a pair of sock out of this skein.  This is a traditional 3-ply.  It still turned out closer to a sport weight yarn than a fingering weight yarn, but that is ok, those socks knit up faster anyway.  I was really pleased with the hand of this yarn.  I often end up with too much twist in my 3-ply yarns and they can be a little bit hard or wiry.  This has sufficient twist for sock yarn but is still reasonably soft.

Finally, after about six months, my "purse socks" are finished!  I had several opportunities to knit on them last week and was close enough to the end that I was determined to pull them out here at home and finish them off.  The yarn is Voolenvine Footsie in the colorway Manderlay.    

We are getting into the seasons where I generally have more time for sock knitting again so I hope that the next pair will be finished must faster.

One more full skein is off my Kiwi already.  This is a skein of undyed Corriedale 2-ply bulky weight.  The fiber was part of a breed study that I am nearly done with (9 months after the program finished!) but I did some samples at different ratios on my Kiwi and tried chain plying it to see if a 3-ply would be nice.  I ended up spinning it in my most default way on my Kiwi.  I used the 7.5:1 ration (the middle groove on the standard whorl) and spun it short backward draft and kept the singles somewhat thick. It poofed up a lot in washing though!  I expected more or a heavy worsted/aran and it is definitely bulky.  It is really lovely though.  I might end up dyeing it, I don't know.