Crafting Gone Ugly

I should be ashamed to post something so godawful ugly but I am savoring the experience of making this, the first, in the pair of the world's ugliest socks. I will obviously never ever wear these outside of the house, I am using up all the tiniest balls of sock weight samples of handspun yarns I've made at classes and while just sampling. I can remember just when I made a lot of these little balls of yarn, turned into stripes. I remember the various classes I took, the spindles they were spun on, the name's of many of the sheep. There is wool, hemp, bamboo, even cotton blended in parts of these yarns, there is a yarn that is the product of an indigo pot gone very wrong but I am forging ahead! Of course, I could have saved these samples and eventually made something visually appealing out of them but I opted not to. Why?

The biggest reason is that Bay Area winters and the minimally insulated/heated houses here make for Freezing Cold feet. The second reason is that my current scrappy socks are wearing out. Also, I am really, really trying to de-stash my fiber/yarn/fabric supply this year and I like to save the gourmet yarn for gifts and such. And, hey, they are house socks that are going to wear out in a couple of seasons and it feels so thrifty and economical to use oddballs this way.

Knitting all these tiny samples really lets me feel the difference in each yarn and gives me a good feel for how my hand spun sock yarns ought to feel and what they ought to be made out of. That brownish grey spot under the dark blue is my favorite section. It is from of a sheep named Laura, who has possibly the most pleasureable fleece to card and spin the wide world.