Transcript for

Episode 116:

Plying for Consistency

Encore episode: 

You're listening to the Sheepspot Podcast, a show for hand spinners about making yarns we love. Hello there, sheep spotters. Welcome to episode 11, I'm Sasha from Sheepspot dot com where we offer diverse hand dyed walls and the information and support you need to make them into beautiful yarns. Today I'm really excited to talk to you about plying and in particular about how to ply your yarns for consistency.

So in planning this episode, I've actually surprised myself a bit about how much I have to say about this topic. So I'm actually gonna be talking about plying for consistency over two separate episodes. This week, I'm gonna focus on what you can do with just your wheel, your lazy Kate, and of course your singles. Next week I'm gonna talk about how adding a bobbin winder and storage bobbins into the mix can up your plying game to a whole other level.

So this week, the basics, when we talk about plying for consistency, we're mostly talking about maintaining a consistent amount of ply twist throughout your entire skein. There's a bit more to say about plying co consistency in woolen yarns, though, and I will get to that. My first suggestion about plying is that you let your singles rest overnight before you ply them.

This allows the twist to settle down a little bit, and I find I actually really do do this almost every time, and I find that it really makes the whole plying operation easier, especially if I'm using more PLAs than I usually do, say four plys instead of three. I'm pretty, I make lots of three ply yarns, and I'm pretty comfortable with doing that.

But if I'm gonna go up a ply to a four ply, then I definitely want to be using those more relaxed singles that have had a little time to sit overnight. Or if I'm chain plying, which I don't do very often and still find it quite challenging with fresh singles, that's another time I'm definitely gonna let them rest. I might even let them rest for two days in that case.

Now let's talk a little bit about lazy Kates. So lazy Kates are the tools that hold your bobbins while you're plying from them. And you may have a Kate that came with your wheel, or you may have one that you've made yourself from a shoebox and knitting needles. Either way, as far as I'm concerned, you're good. But my first wheel, which was a Schacht ladybug, came with a Kate, that was actually attached to the wheel. And there are a couple of other wheels with attached Kates: some of the Spinolution wheels and some of the Louets.

These can be really convenient for storing your extra bobbins where you can get to them easily. But I don't love them for plying because I think plying works best with your Kate either next to you or behind you, but not in front of you.  I don't like the, all the switching of direction of having to pull the ply backward off the bobbin and then trying to guide the twist in as they go forward onto the bobbin that you're plying onto. So my recommendation would be to get, or to make a separate Kate if you are, if the Kate that came with your wheel actually is attached to your wheel.

Sarah Anderson actually has a fabulous video, which I'll link to in the show notes about how to make a lazy Kate from a paper grocery bag, some knitting needles and some plastic grocery bags. It's brilliant. You don't actually need to spend money to set yourself up for success and get a Kate that you can put in the best position for you. Now, some people put their Kates way behind them, like across the room or even in the next room, and they do this because the twist in the singles will move and level out over that distance between the bobbin and your hand. This may be less important if you were really careful about maintaining your treadling and drafting rhythm while you're making the singles. As I discussed last week, I don't like to have, personally, I don't like to have my Kate too far away because A, I live with two cats under the age of one year, and b, I like to be able to switch between bobbins of singles easily, and that's something that I'm gonna talk about more next week. 

So I usually put it to the side and I put it on my fiber supply side, which for me is my left side and just a bit behind me. But I want to be able to get to it easily. And I want to be able to dissuade kittens from playing with those singles as they're coming off the bobbin. So let's say you've got your bobbins of rested singles. You've got a separate bobbin for each ply that you want to put into your yarn, and you have your Kate where you want it.

And so now it's time to figure out how much ply twist you want and how you're gonna get there consistently. So if you've sampled and made a reference card for this spin, have a look now at your ply back sample. Assuming that you've actually spun your singles in the way that you've planned and that your twist is pretty consistent in your singles, your ply back test will show you what a balanced yarn for those singles is gonna look like. Now, there are situations in which you might want a little more ply twist or a little less twist ply twist than you'd use to get a perfectly balanced yarn. And if you're in one of those situations, you'll have to adjust a little bit from your ply back sample.

But your ply back sample is a good place to start. Now, what are the situations in which you might want more or less ply twist? If you are, say, spinning a yarn where you're really concerned about abrasion, you want that yarn to really hold up, you might want to put in a little more ply twist. For example, I just spun a through ply sock yarn, and I put a little more twist, ply twist in. Then I would ordinarily for a balanced yarn, if I want a yarn to have a sup to be super drapey and have a super soft hand, that's a sit situation in which I might back off a little bit in my ply twist.

Normally, I usually do spin balanced yarns, but it's important to know that you know it's your yarn and you can make it however you want, and you can control certain aspects of your finished yarn by changing up your ply twist a little bit. The one thing that you do want to be aware of though is that if you've got a huge amount of, twist, either singles twist or ply twist and your yarn is not really not balanced, that it may skew your knitting a little bit. So it, if you're knitting with it, it may cause a stockinette fabric to skew a little bit to the left or to the right. So that's just something to be aware of.

Don't go overboard with the unbalancing thing, but you don't have to spin every yarn in a perfectly balanced way. It's your yarn. Do what you want. Okay, so you've looked at your playback sample and let's assume that you're, you are going for a balanced yarn in this case. So attach your singles to your leader and and keep your fiber supply hand on your hip with a finger between each ply so you can keep a bit of tension on each of the plies. This is particularly important if you're using fresh singles where they might have a tendency to twist up on themselves a little bit, being able to tension. 

Each individual ply can help with that. You can pull out those little pigtails as you go. So you've got your fiber supply, hand on your hip, a finger between each ply, and then start treadling. And with your orifice hand, just guide the twist into your yarn. I keep a finger between each ply on my forward hand as well as on my fiber supply hand, but it's not completely necessary. Lots of people don't do it. I just find it gives me a little bit more control. So ply a little bit of your yarn, let it wind all the way onto the bobbin.

Remember that your yarn is gonna be an acquiring twist until it's fully wound onto the bobbin. So in order to get an accurate read in your ply back tests, either on your singles or on your plying, you wanna make sure that you let it wind all the way on and then pull it back off the bobbin. So pull some of it off the bobbin and have a look at it. Compare it to your ply back sample. Or if you don't have a ply back sample, let the plied yarn ply back on itself and see what happens.

It should ply back on itself, but gently. So if it doesn't ply back on itself at all and you're using rested singles, you almost certainly don't have enough ply twist. Remember that if your singles have rested, you should have a fresher ply twist than singles twist right now. So if your yarns hanging in a nice open loop, when you wash it and reactivate the singles twist, you're gonna end up with a lot more singles twist than ply twist, and you'll have a super loose ply. So you do want it to ply back on itself, and I would say firmly, but not too tightly. So if, because it's really snapping together very tightly, it's likely that you probably have a bit more ply twist than you would want for a balanced yarn.

So now you've got a ply twist that you're happy with and you know what it looks and feels like. And your task now is to figure out how many treads it took you to get that amount of twist. And I start to figure this out by feel. So I ply a length of yarn, being sure to bring my forward hand, my guiding in the twist hand back the same distance each time, and I count my treads as I feel the twist come into the yarn. And then I look at my yarn, I try my ply back again, and I'm usually pretty close at this point. I might try another couple of samples, one with one treadle fewer or one treadle more just to be sure that I'm where I want to be. And then once I've decided on a number of treads and crucially written it down on my sample card,

I just ply the rest of the S skein using that rhythm. And I check in periodically to make sure I'm on target. But basically I can generally stay pretty close to that rhythm. And if I stay close to that rhythm and if I'm drawing my forward hand back the same distance each time, then I'm going to get consistent ply twist through my s skein.

So that's how you get consistent ply twist throughout your S skein. And that is it for me this week. You can find the show notes for this episode at www dot Sheepspot com slash podcast slash episode 11. I will include a link to the Sarah Anderson video I mentioned, and also a couple more links to my favorite information sources on plying, just in case you want to take a deeper dive into this topic.

If you'd like to get an email notification each week when the show posts just subscribe to my newsletter. You can do that at Sheepspot dot com slash subscribe. And subscribers get exclusive access to transcripts of the podcast as well as weekly Sheepspot news and the occasional coupon code to the online store. So that's Sheepspot dot com slash subscribe. I will talk to you next week about how to up your plying game even more.

Until then, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.