It ends well...

So busy! Work is slammin' me with ends to tie and projects to wrap up.  Still knitting up odd bits of the stash for Christmas though.  Here's the output (details on my Ravelry project page):

Oh yes, that's a hand spun neck warmer!  Yippee!  It's going to my mommy cause I think it will match the mittens I made her a few years back. 

And look what I made:

So very happy with this!!  I had it sitting on my desk as I worked today so I could admire and pet it.  The fiber is BFL from Viola! that I bought at the Woodstock Fiber Festival in October. It spun up more evenly than the merino did, but I had a bit of a break down when it came to plying.  Seriously, there were tears.

I had read in Respect the Spindle that it helps with yarn management to wind your singles off into a ball before plying.  So I did, and pushed it off the ball winder onto a TP roll.  Then that went into a coffee cup and I was off.  Everything was going swimmingly, I was watching Elf and having a jolly ole time when one of my plies broke.  And when I looked at the yarn coming off the ball, it looked as though the plies were coming off unevenly.  Don't ask me how, I just thought it looked like a bunch of knots, pig tails and a rotten mess.  The thought of several weeks worth of work wrecked brought me to tears. 

If I had a mentor, she or he could have talked me down, but as it was, on my own, I had to get a grip and investigate the horror more closely myself.  And of course, everything was fine.  It was just the plies coming back on themselves.  Put under tension they started to behave again.  What a moment though!  Now I know, and I don't think I will ever forget that lesson.

There's plenty more fiber to go.  I'm enjoying spinning this up so much and I'm flabbergasted at how beautiful the colors are: 

I'm so proud of me!!