Transcript for
Episode 104:
How Much Ply Twist? The Plyback of the Ply and
the Question of Balance
Do you sometimes finish a plied yarn, only to see that it has way too much or too little ply twist? In this episode, I'll share how I ensure the right amount of ply twist for a balanced yarn, and ask just how important balance is anyway.
Hello there darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 104 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
I went through a spinning stage during which I was overplying every single yarn I spun. After I made quite a few positively rope-like yarns, I figured that I need to rethink my approach to ply twist, and I developed a way to determine, at the wheel, whether my ply was overtwisted, undertwisted, or just right. I will unveil that in this episode, but first, a brief rant about balance.
I.
When we're talking about yarn, a "balanced" yarn is one in which the singles twist is balanced by the ply twist, and the individual fibers in the yarn are parallel to the sides of the yarn, and not angled toward one side or the other.
Whether it matters that your yarn is balanced or not depends on what you plan to do with it. If you are using it to knit stockinette stitch, a lack of balance may make your fabric bias, or tilt, to one side or the other, and in some situations this can be a really problem. There are some ways to mitigate this by using smaller needles or changing your stitch pattern to one with a balance between knit and purl stitches, but it's not something that will block out, because the extra singles- or ply-twist actually pushes the stitches in one direction or the other.
That said, there are a lot of situations in which you might not want a balanced yarn. When I spin a sock yarn, for example, I like to add a bit of extra ply twist because it makes the yarn more resistant to wear. Extra ply twist is something to consider whenever your highest priority is that the yarn will be hard-wearing. I've actually never had a problem with biasing at all. That may be an effect of what I knit and how I knit it, so your mileage may vary; the best way to test whether you yarn is going to bias in your stitch pattern is, as always, to sample and swatch.
II.
But let's say for the sake of argument that you're going for a balanced yarn. How do you make sure that you have one? I'm going to tell you about three ways to do this. I'll talk about the one I use most often last.
The first method is to (remember to) make a plyback sample when you first spin your singles. Remember that your singles twist will get sleepy very soon after you spin them, so do this with singles you have just spun. To make a plyback sample, you pull some yarn off the bobbin, fold it, and let it ply on itself; if you're planning a three-ply yarn, fold it twice. (This can be a little tricky to do but you'll get it with practice.) Your plyback sample tells you what those singles will look like if plied to balance. Put it aside so you can use it as a reference point when plying.
Then when you start plying, you compare your plied yarn to your sample. Remember, though, that your singles twist has by this time gone to sleep. When you finish this yarn, that twist is going to wake up, so you need to add a little more twist to your ply than you have in your plyback sample.
Then you figure out how many treadles it took you to get to that amount of twist, establish a rhythm, keep to that rhythm, and voila, you should be good to go. I'm going to talk more about this in the next episode.
The second method is to just look closely at the fibers in your yarn. If they are straight, not leaning to one side or the other, you're close, but again, you need to add a little extra twist in the plying direction to compensate for that dormant singles twist. So you actually want the fibers to be leaning a bit in the plying direction. If you've plied your yarn S, or counterclockwise, that means you want the fibers to lean a bit to the left. This method is a bit easier with worsted yarns, where the fibers are aligned, than woolen ones.
Finally, the third method is what I do most of the time, because I often forget to make a plyback sample. My students have dub this "the plyback of the ply." Here's how it works.
I ply a bit, then pull some of the plied yarn off the bobbin (remember that your yarn will continue to acquire twist until it winds on to the bobbin, so you want to take the yarn from there for the most accurate result). Then I let the plied yarn ply back on itself. It should do so. If it doesn't ply back on itself at all, but just hangs in a loop, once your singles twist comes back during finishing you're going to have an underplied skein. So you want it to ply back on itself. I like it to ply together decisively, but gently. For me this is the easiest and fastest way to determine whether I'm going to end up with a balanced yarn. With a little bit of experience and practice, you'll learn what "decisively but gently" looks like, so experiment on some samples. You'll quickly discover how you want your plyback of the ply to look for the results you want.
III.
But what if you get it wrong? You ply, you finish, and your yarn doesn't hang in a nice open loop when it's dry.
If the skein twists just a little in one direction or the other, and I'm otherwise happy with it, I usually go on my merry way and don't worry about it. In my experience it's not enough to make much of a difference (again, YMMV, so swatch!).
If the skein twists multiple times after its been washed and dried, there's an simple fix. If it's twisting in the Z direction, then it has two much S twist, so you can just run it back through your wheel in the Z direction (clockwise) to add a bit more. If it's twisting in the S direction, that means it had too much Z twist, and needs more S twist. In that case you would run it through your wheel counterclockwise.
It's easy to overdo this correction, so if you're working with a treadle wheel, use a big whorl and treadle slowly; on an e-spinner, turn down your speed. Unless something has gone massively wrong in your initial plying, you're just making a little tweak here. I like to check the alignment of the fibers periodically so I don't overdo it.
Are you always going for a balanced yarn? Or are there times when you deliberately over- or under-ply. How do you figure out how much ply twist is enough when you're plying? Is ply twist something that you find challenging? I would love to know.
As always, there's a dedicated thread in The Flock, Sheepspot's free online community for inquisitive handspinners, where you can discuss or comment on this episode. Here's how to join the discussion in three easy steps:
Find the show notes: they're right in the description of this episode in your podcast app.
Click on the link to the discussion thread. If you're a member of The Flock, you'll be whizzed directly to it. If not, you'll have to join The Flock first (it's completely free), and then be whizzed to the discussion.
Join the conversation! Easy peasy.
That's it for me this time. Thank you so much for listening, friend. I so appreciate it. I will be back next week with some tips on maintaining even ply twist throughout your skein; until then, make some time to spin something. It will do you good.