Custom yarn - knitting olympics day 1

In case you're wondering, we did go for a scenic drive in the country today, and saw some forests and mountains and a bit of the small towns north of Montréal. But we did also manage to get back to the Magasin de Fibre L.B. inc., also known as La Bobineuse de Laine. I wanted to get my nerve up and actually create some custom yarn and the picture above shows what I had made for me. You choose colours in one type of fibre, ie. they don't mix cotton and wool, and there are different textures to choose from as well. I chose cotton because most of the other fibres were part acrylic and I prefer the natural fibres. I chose to blend two strands of medium pink, a strand of light pink boucle and a strand of purple boucle. Here is a close up of the result:The cost for the cotton was $10/livre, which is one pound. This is just one of the cones - the smaller one! I also bought a pretty light blue turquoise blended with a single strand of silver. And I couldn't resist a couple more of the grab bags. Ok three more. They were $1 each!! The lady in the store was very friendly and helpful, I showed her a yarn I had on hand and she suggested using 5 strands to create a blend of a similar thickness. I asked if I could take her picture and she said it was ok.This is another (sorry, blurry) picture of the machine used to blend the custom yarn. This store was so much fun! I'm glad I managed to fit in another trip and I was so happy with how my pound of custom yarn came out. The entire yarn spree cost $18.And finally, here is my progress on my Knitting Olympics project after the first day. This is the bottom of the bag and it's 14 inches wide. After the bottom is done, you pick up stitches and start knitting in the round. Bradley's striped mittens for me are going well - he's already used five of the colours: pink, pale pink, light olive green, red and orange. I guess he'll keep going soon, but right now he's going out for some poutine!