Script for

Episode 145:

Are Cabled Yarns Worth the Work?

Have you ever made a cabled yarn? If you have, you know that it entails a lot of plying time. In this week's episode, I ask whether all that plying is worth the effort.

Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to Episode 145 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. We are talking about the plying and yarn structure Pillar of Skillful Spinning™ this month, so today I'm going to talk about what I think of as complex or advanced yarn structures. These are structures that are a little trickier to make than your standard two- or three-plies.

Most of us usually spin our yarns with our wheels turning clockwise (or in the "Z" direction) and ply with our wheels turning counterclockwise (or in the "S" direction). But there are lots of ways to create different yarn structures by mixing things up. For example, you can create an opposing-ply yarn by spinning one ply S and one Z and then plying them together S. This gives the S ply extra twist, which causes it to shorten and kink up on itself while the Z-spun ply wraps around it. The result is a somewhat odd-looking but very elastic yarn.

A crêpe yarn is a three ply yarn that starts with two of the singles spun S and one spun Z. Then, in step two, the S twist yarns are plied together Z with twice the usual twist. In the third step, the two-ply made in step two is plied together with the Z-spun single in the S direction. The result is a yarn with a beautiful and interesting texture. Infinite versions can be made by varying the diameter and/or color of the individual plies.

Cabled yarns take the logic of the crêpe yarn and extend it to four plies. You start by spinning four singles S. Then you make two two-ply yarns by plying the singles in the Z direction with twice as much twist as you would use in spinning a regular old yarn. Finally, you ply the two overplyed two-ply yarns together S.

Cabled yarns are time-consuming to make. If you usually spin your singles Z, you may find spinning them S requires more attention than usual, and this may slow you down a bit. But the real time investment comes in the second step, when you're overplying those singles into two Z-plied two-ply yarns, because remember that you need to give them twice as much ply twist as you usually would. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can either figure out what your treadle count would be for a "normal" yarn and double it. So let's say your treadle count for plying singles with a similar amount of twist would be five treadles. You would use 10 treadles instead. The other approach is to ply as you usually would and then run the resulting yarn through your wheel adding the extra twist. In that case, you'd ply the yarn once with 5 treadles and then again with 5 treadles. Either way, that's a lot of ply twist to be added, and it takes a while. And you still aren't finished: you still have to do step three, in which you ply the two two-plies together.

All this spinning and overplying and plying, though, produce a yarn that looks like nothing else. Everything rests on the overplying in step two. If you don't add enough ply twist at that point, your cabled yarn will look like two two-plies plied together, which isn't what you want. You want your two-plies to snap together in the final plying step into a yarn that looks almost braided and has a square shape. There are great pictures of the difference in Sarah Anderson's The Spinner's Book of Yarn Design (which I highly recommend, by the way).

In a certain frame of mind, when I'm feeling really patient, I love making a cabled yarn, because I love the way they look. And I've made a few. But in prepping for this episode, I realized that I've never actually knitted with any of them. So, in the interests of science, I needed to do some testing. The question I wanted to answer was this: do cabled yarns look as distinctive in fabric as they do as yarn? In other words, is all this spinning and over-plying and plying again really work the time that it takes?

So I dug a skein out of my stash and got to swatching. I knit a 44 stitch wide swatch and started for four rows of garter stitch and then a couple of inches of stockinette. Neither stitch pattern looked very different to me from a swatch knit in a three-ply yarn. But then I switched to seed stitch and there I could see a difference. The stitch definition was amazing.

So the answer to my question was a qualified "yes," if I'm using a stitch pattern that's really going to benefit from the distinct structure of this yarn. I'll be saving my cabled yarn for these situations.

The other reason to make a cabled yarn is that they're extremely durable. In The Spinner's Book of Yarn Design, Sarah Anderson wear-tested a variety of yarn structures in hand-knit socks, all spun from the same fiber: three ply, chain ply, four ply, and cabled. She found that the cabled yarn significantly outperformed the others, including the four-ply.

If I were going to be knitting something that was going to get an average amount of wear, in stockinette, though, I probably wouldn't bother, unless I just had a hankering to make a cabled yarn. There is something so satisfying about that final plying step, when the two two-ply yarns come together and snap into this amazing shape and texture. In that sense, cabled yarns are kind of are their own reward.

Have you ever tried creating a cabled yarn? Do you think all the steps involved were worth the time and effort? I would love to know what you think about this time-consuming but hard-wearing and unmistakable yarn. So would you do me a favor? Would you hop on over to the dedicated discussion thread in The Flock and tell me? The link is in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. Just open up the description for this episode and click the link to be taken right to the the thread.

Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week to explain why I never end up with leftover singles when plying. I'll be talking about the three methods I use to ensure that my bobbins come out even, and if you hate winding up with leftovers when you're finished plying, you really don't want to miss it. Until then, spin something! I promise it will do you good.