Plying up some yarn
May 18th, 2007 at 2:47 pm (spinning)
Last night I was unable to go to my spinning group; so after the fun nieghborhood get together, and getting the extremely cranky and tired kids to bed, I did some spinning (or rather, some plying):
A close up (click for bigger):
I’m using a slightly different method to ply this yarn. So far I like it! Normally I use my left hand to feed the singles in, using a finger to separate them, and help control the tension on each individual ply. Then I use my right hand to control the twist, and walk it up the yarn as I treadle. This usually works pretty well; but for some reason I was playing around with a few different techniques. I came up with this one.
I use my left hand to hold the two singles as they come off the bobbins. I don’t separate the plies with a finger; I just let them lay in my palm. I don’t use my right hand at all. I open/close my left hand to stop the twist going back into the two singles farther than my hand, and move the left hand toward and away from the wheel while I’m feeding on the yarn, or pulling back to allow more twist into the new yarn. It has economy of motion, is fairly rhythmic, and as long as the two singles are roughly the same size, it allows the strands to wind around each other easily. (Sometimes you can end up with one strand under more tension than the other, and the 2nd strand winds around the first, so you don’t have an ‘even’ ply).
Hopefully I’ll remember how I was doing it, as i’m probably only 1/4 of the way through plying the whole 8 ounces.
(pink blanket update: I’m over halfway through the 3rd ball of yarn; which means I’m almost halfway done with that half of the blanket. So that’s barely a quarter of the way done with the blanket. A lot of quarters going on here…)
marta said,
May 18th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
whatever you’re doing, keep doing it! The yarn is simply gorgeous. It looks fine - what w.p.i. is it?
marta said,
May 18th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
oooooohhhhhhh…..just looked again…I wanna woolee winder!
Mom said,
May 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
How about a YourTube demo of your plying? I am a “visual aid” type of person myself. =)