My favorite Christmas knitting item this year happens to be a pair of handspun socks. I am completely in love with the yarn that resulted from this delightful colorway, appropriately named Man Sock, dyed by Three Waters Farm. I was going for something approximating Trekking yarn, where the colors of the individual plies change over time, and I think I got pretty close.
I divided the roving in half lengthwise (to make two socks). Then I divided each of those parts into three pieces lengthwise. If one end of the roving is A, and the other B, then I spun one of those thirds A-->B, the second one B-->A. The third one I split one more time lengthwise so that I could spin it A-->B-->A (yielding color stretches half as long as the thicker strands, for more shifts in color). So the yarn is roughly symmetrical head to tail, and should approximately match from one sock to the other (give or take). We'll see how the second one comes out!
The majority of the yarn so far is Blue-Faced Leicester, and the second bump of fiber is superwash Colonial (to finish the cuffs). I got around 290 yards out of 4 oz, and the socks are nice and squishy knit on size 2 dpns.
The 3 stages of sock:
A nice close-up view of sock deliciousness!
It will be hard to give these away on Christmas morning, but the recipient is very deserving!
