Just Call Me 'Jenny'

First off, update on the Blankie of Wonder and Magic:
Yes, it is progressing quite nicely. I want this blankie to be at least big enough to cover a twin bed, and it's already wide enough for that. This is the first time I've measured the width of all the squares together and it's just a hair over 4 ft. I think I'll just add four or five more squares to this row, then start joining them with the next row(they're not attatched in this pic, just laid out in a line).

I got 2 skeins of KnitPicks Bare Essentials for a good bargain from a nice lady on Ravelry, and I dyed one of them with red food coloring last week.

It's a good thing I was aiming for pink, because that's all the red dye we had. I'm knitting it up into socks for Thing 1's birthday. They're top down, since I did a picot hem at the top and didn't want to have to sew it down.
It's very neat, and deceptively simple. I learned the technique from watching Knitty Gritty, and you can find it on their website (diynetwork.com/knittygritty).

The other skein is sitting on my worktable, waiting until I can get some blue food coloring. I'm going to do this one in blue and green stripes, with narrow undyed stripes between them.

So here comes Jenny(extra IQ points to whoever guesses the refference first): The week before last, I decided to try my hand at plying. I haven't done this before because I am dependent on my spindle, and only my spindle. Nothing else. No Lazy Kate, no nothing. So, I had to improvise...

Yes, I know, that's the most ghetto Lazy Kate I've ever seen, too. A cardboard box, 2 knitting needles, a drinking straw and the cardboard spool that a ball of crochet cotton come wound on. But it worked... barely.

Now, I know all you spinners are going to hate me for this, "beginner's luck," you'll say.
This is all I had left on one cough bobbin when I was done. Beginner's luck, that's it.
I am quite proud of my little skein, for all it's faults. It's much more even than any single I've spun yet.
I also tried 3-plying, by the Navajo method. I didn't need the Ghetto Lazy Kate for that, but I did have to wind the single onto my umbrella swift to hold it while winding the plied yarn back onto the spindle.
Not as even, but far more even than the single was.