End Of My Rope

Day 226: Uh-oh, now what? I've come to the end of my rope, so to speak, plying two strands and having emptied one bobbin well ahead of the other. For many years, my solution to this problem involved unwinding the remaining singles, wrapping it around chairs, tables, doorknobs and so on until I reached the approximate middle, adding a weight of some sort at that point, and then following the same path in reverse so that I could join the ends, bobbin 1 to bobbin 2. As I continued plying, I'd have to get up periodically to untangle the weight as it tried to round a bend, and of course Skunk thought the slow-moving object was the best cat toy ever. Then one day as I was prowling YouTube, I discovered something called a "plying bracelet," actually a clever means of winding the remaining singles onto my hand in such a manner that the yarn would could be drawn from both ends. Once wound, the mass is unhitched from the fingers and slid onto the wrist. The ends can then be joined and plying continues as usual. I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but once I'd learned to follow the proper winding sequence, I was surprised to see how well the "bracelet" worked. It's arguably the best trick this old dog has learned in the last twenty years! Plying is still a slow project, though. Looking at the two two-ply bobbins I've completed this week, you would never imagine that the one on the left (brown tones, lace-weight bamboo fiber) took three days, while the one on the right ("raspberry yogurt," worsted weight wool) only took one. Plying done, I can now return to spinning singles.