Sockaploooza: Making your own sock yarn

I really enjoy spinning yarn and lately I have been getting my yarn down to fingering weight so I thought it would be awesome if I spun my own self striping sock yarn. It won't be traditional sock yarn in that the stripes don't repeat exactly, but it still is super fun yarn.
This is the fleece that is Superwash. I dyed it with One Shot dyes to look like a sunset. I really like how it turned out.
I then went and carefully pulled out the fibers in layers so that it saved the different color layers.


Then I seperated the layers so that there was a close to equal amount of fiber in each pile so that I could spin each pile onto a seperate bobbin. This just makes it easier to ply later.Then I carefully drafted each layer back and forth to keep the colors fairly pure. This makes better stripes because it has long stretches of each color.

Then I spun the drafted fiber into nice stretches of color, fine spun to make nice warm washable socks.
Here's the two strands plied together into super gorgeous yarn.

I really love this yarn, but I think it has some drawbacks. I bought the fiber on ebay and I am not totally convinced that it is superwash. I am going to try washing it and see what happens. I have to anyway to set the twist. I think I might even (hark) make a swatch and see if it felts in the wash. It also is a bit lumpy, so we will see if it works. I will decide after I get it all set and everything. If it felts it might make a nice bag....