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.

Handcuffed To The Wheel

Day 163: And there I was, handcuffed to the wheel for the duration. No, I hadn't been arrested. I'd made a plying bracelet from the last of the singles on one bobbin and was finishing up eight ounces of a lovely Merino-bamboo blend, but I was going to be there a while as the yarn uncoiled itself from my wrist. Had I taken it off my hand...to answer the call of nature, say, or because someone showed up on my doorstep...I might never have been able to untangle it.

A few posts back, I mentioned a plying bracelet, referring to it as "a rat's nest," which isn't truly accurate. It's actually a means by which the thread can be drawn off from both ends simultaneously so that it can be plied with itself. The method for winding it onto the fingers seems complex at first, but once you've mastered it, the action is not difficult to maintain. Assuming the right hand will be the hand nearest the body when spinning, the singles is passed around the back of the hand (for this example, the left edge of the hand as the palm is facing you), brought to the front and counter-clockwise around the middle finger, taken to the back of the hand again following the same path, then brought around the opposite (right) side of the hand, clockwise around the middle finger, and then to the back of the hand again following the path it just travelled. The motion is repeated until all the singles has been wound onto the hand. Then the loops around the middle finger are carefully removed from it, and the bracelet is slid onto the wrist. The end is joined to the end of the singles on the bobbin which was emptied first, and plying can be continued normally. The singles in the plying bracelet feeds from both its outer and inner wraps, and only occasionally does the spinner need to dip between the two strands to keep it from tangling. This technique is sometimes referred to as "Andean plying," but its true origins are unclear and the subject of contention among spinners. In any event, the method was developed in the dim, dark days of drop spindles, long before the "modern" spinning wheel was invented. You have to admire the ingenuity!

It took the better part of two days to ply up eight ounces of Paradise Fibers Bambino plus 60 yards of cotton I'd spun on the charkha. With another bobbin already full of a different Bambino colourway, I desperately needed to free up a bobbin in order to continue. Now I'm back to spinning singles, but another Plyday is coming soon, and I'll undoubtedly have an hour or so when I'm once again handcuffed to the wheel.

Rookie Mistake

Day 150: To put this essay in the proper perspective, you must understand that I learned how to spin before I entered kindergarten. Admittedly, I could only make a simple and lumpy single strand, and I was unaware of the nuances in the twist (S versus Z), but I feel I can still claim to knowing how to spin for most of my many years of life. However, I am fairly new to spinning cotton. Nevertheless, that doesn't excuse making a rookie mistake.

I sat down yesterday morning to ply from two full tahklis, thinking I'd perform the task with my regular spinning wheel as I usually do. I tied the ends together on the leader and began treadling. Almost immediately, one of the strands broke. That's a common problem with cotton which hasn't been sufficiently twisted, and because I was at the end of the strand, I thought that was the cause. I re-tied and tried again, but had only spun a few inches before the strand broke again. Then I noticed something. One of the singles was twisting, the other untwisting. Both should have been untwisting slightly as they plied together. I looked more closely, and discovered the problem. One was twisted Z, the other S. Apparently when setting up the charkha wheel, I had inadvertently reversed the direction of spin for the second tahkli. At this point, I had a couple of options. I could spin more of each twist on two fresh tahklis, or I could wind off all the S-twisted thread and ply it with itself. I decided to follow the latter course, and began winding a "plying bracelet" on my hand.

What is a plying bracelet? I knew someone would ask. I have to say that the primitive person who came up with this seemingly impossible piece of engineering was the Einstein of their times. Basically, it's rat's-nest of single-ply thread, wound around fingers and palm in a complex pattern and then slipped onto the wrist, a tangled mess (or so it would seem) which feeds from both ends simultaneously to ply with itself. The principle works very well with wool, but with the much more fragile cotton thread, I wasn't convinced I'd be able to salvage my work. In fact, I was unable to ply from the bracelet using the spinning wheel, and thus resorted to putting it on a manual tahkli. The process of plying 38.5 meters of thread took over an hour, as I constantly had to remind myself to twirl the tahkli counter-intuitively. I achieved my goal without any breakage, in itself a milestone in the art of spinning cotton.