Day 153: After spinning cotton onto two tahklis in opposite directions, I redeemed one by making a plying bracelet so that I could ply the thread back onto itself. That's the skein in the photo. However, my attention is not on details lately, so when I filled a new tahkli to match the remaining one and sat down to ply them with the spinning wheel, I discovered that they were spun with an S-twist rather than my customary Z. I would have to ply them backwards to my usual manner. This is not a fatal mistake by any means. However, I will have to use the finished thread in separate areas of any project so that a casual glance won't show a difference. Not a problem! I'll just use them on different ends of a towel. That said, once I had spun up enough on a second tahkli, I was ready to ply on my regular spinning wheel. I've found this is the best way to handle cotton. With more than twice as much single-ply thread to work with, I sat down at the wheel 8:15 last night, thinking I'd have it done in half an hour, 45 minutes tops. That proved to be an ambitious estimate. I finished all but the last few feet which needed to be bracelet-plied at 9:15, double the thread in the same amount of time it took to ply the skein on a manual tahkli. I have now made a little note to myself, stuck to the inside of the charkha, showing the direction the drive band needs to go over the pulley so that the thread twists in the appropriate direction for a double strand plied S. "Spin Z, ply S." That's the formula I prefer.
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