Time To A-ply Myself

Day 17: It's time to "a-ply" myself to the task! There's a system here, not a backlog. You see, it's recommended that after spinning a "singles" (I'd call it a "single," but the spinning community uses "singles" as a singular noun), you let the yarn have at least 24 hours to rest and adjust to its new twisted lifestyle. This gives it time to get the kinks out before it's asked to twist the opposite direction in tandem with another "singles." I spin one bobbin and set it aside. Then I spin another. In order to give the second one its rest, then I will spin a third (in this case, of a different colour), and when that one is off the wheel, then I can ply the first two singles together. Alternately, I can spin two more singles as I've done here, which gives the second two a chance to rest while I ply the first two. It really isn't as complicated as it sounds. In the end, these four bobbins will yield two double-ply yarns and will then be freed up for the next round of singles spinning.

The Cone Of Fame: Plying Turkish Cops

Day 316: Sometimes I just have to drop something in here for ease of personal reference, and in this case, it has to do with manipulating Turkish cops. No, I'm not talking about bribery. I am referring a process by which the cops of spun singles yarn are controlled so that they can be plied together without tangling up with each other. I've had no end of problems with this in the past few months as I've been doing more drop-spindling, and have tried several different systems, none of which worked particularly well. A few days ago, the light bulb over my head lit up. Because they are light in weight, they tend to roll around if not somehow confined. Additionally, rolling around loosens up the outer end of the thread, so that even if they don't twist around each other, they often twist around themselves. Putting a rubber band around each one didn't work. Neither did running them under a stationary object. I needed something which would do two things: hold them in place separately, and allow for a smooth feed of the thread. Brainstorm! I stuffed each one into its own cone of weaving yarn, fed the working ends out through the top of the cone, and I was able to ply right down to the last few feet without a single problem. The process shall forevermore be known as the Cone of Fame.

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.

Plying

Day 277: Happy to finally have my spinning wheen back in operation after months of waiting for a silly little backordered part (the footman-to-treadle connector, a flexible plastic rod 8 mm. in diameter and approximately two inches long), I had even forgotten that I had one spindle of tan single-ply llama wool already done. I spun up an approximately equivalent amount on a second spindle, and then settled into the less-demanding job of turning two single plies into two-ply yarn.

Right now, you might be thinking, "Why not just spin a single thicker strand?" The answer is simple: strength. When spinning, the twist enters the yarn in the direction of an S or a Z depending on the spinner's preference. In plying, two strands are spun separately, each with the same twist, and then are recombined as a double-ply with the twist in the opposite direction. In other words, two S-twist single-ply strands are spun together with a Z-twist. In effect, this untwists the original strands slightly and allows a few fibers of wool to become entangled with each other, binding the strands together and making a stronger, more durable yarn in the end. I almost always ply my yarns unless I'm going for a "novelty" look. In this case, the resultant yarn is a nice sport-weight, more work, but double the fun of spinning.