Transcript for
Episode 106:
What I learned about plying from my e-spinners
Last time I talked about how to ensure even ply twist when you're spinning on a treadle wheel. But what if you're plying on an e-spinner? In this episode, I'll share what I learned about twist and plying the first time I plyed yarn on an e-spinner.
Hello there darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 106 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
So last week I talked about how to ensure even ply twist by counting treadles. And I mentioned that I count treadles all the way through a plying project. There are a lot of things I am very relaxed about in my spinning. Most of the time, for example, I just spin and then figure out what I'm going to do with the yarn, rather than trying to spin for a specific project. Even with the big combo spin I'm working on right now, I know I want to knit a vest or a sweater, but I don't have a pattern picked out, and I won't even think about it until the yarn is finished. I know this approach would drive a lot of spinners a little crazy, but it works for me.
Similarly, when I'm sampling to decide how to spin a new fiber, I usually prioritize pleasure during the spinning process over trying for a particular result. I want to enjoy spinning and I usually don't want to micromanage it too much.
Except when I'm plying. For whatever reason, even ply twist is something I'm a little obsessed with. And I'm so attached to this particular result that I didn't ply on my e-spinners for ages. I would spin the singles on my Hansen or my EE6 and then ply them on my wheel. Now don't get me wrong: I was definitely attracted to the prospect of being able to ply faster on an e-spinner. Plying isn't my favorite part of spinning and being able to do it faster was tempting. But the specter of plying unevenly was so aversive that I didn't even try. This went on, literally, for years.
Isn't human-ing funny? The things we get our knickers in a twist about?
But I like to set challenges for myself and so I eventually just made myself commit to spinning and plying an entire project on my EE6.
My first thought was "I'll use a metronome and I'll count as I ply." Seriously. This really isn't who I am. I'm relaxed. I don't micromanage. Sure.
So I downloaded a free metronome app and set to work. I figured I'd just find a count that worked to give me the ply twist I wanted and away I'd go.
But I found that I hated the sound of the metronome. And I hated having to start and stop the app in addition to stopping and starting the wheel. I just couldn't get comfortable.
So I decided to try just winging it. And here's what I learned. Three things:
I could ply just fine on the espinner without the metronome if I focused on how the yarn felt in my hands. As we spin or ply, the twist makes the yarn vibrate. It's subtle. You really have to be looking for it in order to notice it. As the twist moves up the strand, this vibration moves with it. I found that once I noticed how intense this vibration felt when the yarn had the amount of ply twist I wanted, I could just wait for that feeling.
This process required my full attention all the way through. When I finished plying that skein I was mentally pretty tired. So in that way it was a very different experience from zoning out and counting treadles, which I can do pretty mindlessly. So this for me is definitely not a "Netflix-and-chill" spinning situation
Because it was tiring, there were points when I lost my focus and put in a little too much ply twist. So the twist definitely was not as even as it would have been had I plied on a treadle wheel. Here's where the other strategies I mentioned in the last episode came to my rescue. In skeining the yarn, I stood as far away as I could from the bobbin, to give the twist lots of space to level out. And I made sure to wash the skein in a lot of hot water so it would have plently of space to move around. The yarn ended up very close to balanced after finishing, and ended up being fine to knit with.
Based on this experiment, here are a few things to think about when you're plying on an e-spinner.
Limit your variables. Make sure you are sitting the same distance from your orifice each time you sit down to ply. As best you can, make sure that your spinner is set to the same speed every time. This way the only variable is your own rhythm.
Think of plying on your e-spinner as a great way to become more sensitive and attentive to the movement of twist in your yarn. This twist awareness is a really important skill to develop. It will help your long draw. It will really just help you become a better spinner overall. So use this as a time to create and fine tune that awareness.
Deploy all the other strategies you have at your disposal to manage twist when creating your singles and preparing to ply: sit at the same distance from your orifice when spinning; keep your speed consistent; rewind your singles onto storage bobbins (episode 12!); let them rest before you ply.
Remember that you can add or subtract ply twist—even after your yarn is finished—by running it back through your wheel.
Remember all the millions of yarn that spinners have spun throughout the ages, when no one really had time to agonize about their ply twist, because they were spinning to clothe themselves and their children and in some cases their lives depended on having that yarn. Sometimes I find it really useful to remember that the way we think about our handspun yarns is really different from the way most spinners have thought about theirs during the 40,000 odd years that spinners have been spinning.
Well, that was therapeutic. There's nothing like a good confession episode about aspects of my spinning that I obsess over. I would love to hear about whether you obsess over ply twist, too, or whether you're a more laid-back plyer. In the descriptions of this episode in your podcast app, you'll find a link to a thread in The Flock, Sheepspot's free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, where you can tell me about your relationship to plying and how you ply on your e-spinner. So do give that link a click and let me know.
Also, dear friend, there is now a way to search every single episode of The Sheepspot podcast by keyword, and even to get curated playlists of episodes about particular topics. So if you're having trouble with a particular aspect of spinning, you can just search for "ply twist" or whatever and get a list of all the times I've talked about that on the podcast. Even better, you'll be taken right to the point in the episodes where I talked about that thing. You'll find a link to the search page and playlists in the description below as well.
That's it for me this time. Thank you so much for listening! If you're listening in real time, this is the last episode for May. Next month our theme will be community, so I'll be back soon with an episode on spinning communities as learning communities. Until then, dear Sheepspotter, go spin something. We both know it will do you good.