Daryl's Ripped Shirt - Hobbledehoy SAL Part 2

First things first. Here is a cat.

Olive is the BF's little baby. She loves him so much and just wants to be on/with him all the time. It's really pathetic. She is pretty young, so she is feisty as all Hell. I have scars because of her, but not because she is mean, but because she is a crazy cat who doesn't understand proper "claw" etiquette. 

Here is another cat. Binx loves my spinning wheel. He lays half under the coffee table and just stares at it as the wheel turns. He is a colony-rescue cat, so sometimes I wonder if he is far smarter than I give him credit for, or borderline "special". 

Back to the yarny part of my blog. I finished my Daryl yarn! I'm really happy with out it turned out, too. I did a thin single, and then n-plied for a nice even fingering weight yarn. There are a total of 24 color blocks.

I'm happy with how the colors blocked. There are two occurrences along the length of the yarn where two of the color blocks are pretty close in color, and I wasn't happy about that, but it'll still look great when it's knit. 

This is why it takes me so long to finish a skein of yarn. I spin very very thinly, and end up with a fingering weight 3-ply. 

Daryl's Ripped Shirt done in a self-striping pattern. 

Daryl's Ripped Shirt - Hobbledehoy SAL Part 1

 I got a wonderful "present" in the mail the other day.

Heeehehe. Hobbledehoy fiber. I bought two Spin Alongs from her fall SAL. Congress of Daleks and Daryl's Ripped Shirt. I also bought a classic batt and some uncarded destash fiber. I happened to pick these up from my moms house (where I have my packages delivered) on Friday. The BF works on Saturdays, so generally I am home alone on Saturdays. I promised him I'd try to get some housework done, and his exact words were, "No you won't. You have new fiber." FYI - I did get some housework done. 

Naturally, with The Walking Dead on, I started with Daryl's Ripped Shirt. I was a little nervous because Liz was saying that this color way would be very manly. I was actually really happy with the colors, because they are "manly", but they are also very warm and autumn/fall-feeling. I dumped out my Daryl battlings and took a look at what I had to work with. 

I noticed 4 dark brown battlings, 4 light brown battlings, and 4 colored battlings (red, green, orange and tan). I immediately knew I wanted to do a thin single and n-ply for a self-striping yarn. I sat for a little while longer, staring at my fiber. I knew I wanted the colors to repeat dark brown, light brown, color, dark brown, light brown, color, etc. I just didn't know how many repeats of each color I wanted. (BF: "what are you staring at?") Eventually I settled with 2. Knowing I wouldn't be able to keep the order of the colors straight in my head, I split each battling in half, and the wound a ball of the split battlings in the order I wanted. 

There. Each ball has the color repeats above in the same order. The color repeats won't necessarily be very exact, because I wasn't very careful when splitting each battling vertically. I just eyeballed it to make sure there was about the same amount in each half. I can definitely tell there is more red in one half, but that's ok. I won't be making socks or anything that will require precision. I have a tendency to make a TON of yarn and then never use it. 

I'm excited to see how this comes out! Part 2 to follow as soon as it is skeined!