Script for

Episode 146:

Why I Never End Up with Leftover

Singles When I Ply

It's the bane of a spinner's existence: you finish plying your beautiful new yarn and you've ended up with leftover singles. Again. You spun those singles lovingly and carefully, and they didn't even make their way into your yarn. What do you do?

Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to Episode 146 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. In today's episode, I'm going to share three different strategies that you can use to ensure that you never end up with leftover singles.

One of the questions my Spin School students can be counted on to ask, as they work through the plying module, is "How can I avoid ending up with leftover singles?" And I get it. It's super irritating, especially when you're hoping to squeeze as much yardage as possible out of your yarn. But there are ways to deal with this, either by preventing it from happening in the first place, or by easily making your leftovers into yarn.

Method 1: Working from multiple storage bobbins

The first method is the one I use most often, because doing this successfully ensures that I rarely end up with more than a yard or so left over, which is perfect for putting on my Spinning Record Card. 

I learned this method from Judith MacKenzie. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it it will become second nature. In fact it's so second nature to me that I find it a little hard to explain, but it's a great thing to be able to do, so I'm going to do my best.

This method assumes that you have rewound your singles from your wheel's bobbins onto some sort of storage bobbin. I explain why this is a good idea in episode 12, and if you haven't heard that episode, listen to it because it will change your spinning life for the better. In order for this to work, you need to have at least one more storage bobbin than you have plies.

Let's assume that your singles are on four storage bobbins and you're making a two-ply yarn. Your storage bobbins are not all going to have exactly the same amount of singles on them, so you're going to start plying with the bobbins that look like they have the most singles on them. 

Ultimately, the object is to use up the singles on all four of your bobbins at about the same rate, and you'll achieve this by always working with the bobbins that look fullest. So you're plying along, and eventually one of your bobbins will start to look like it has the same amount as one of the two bobbins that you haven't used yet. At that point, you'll break the ply on that bobbin and start using one of the others. If you have a bobbin that has more singles on it than the others, you'll keep using that one until it starts to look about equal to one of the others. Then you'll break that ply and switch bobbins. And you'll just keep doing that, using up the singles on the bobbin evenly.

Eventually, one of your four bobbins will run out. Just continue plying evenly from the three remaining bobbins until you're almost finished. Then choose two of the bobbins and keep plying until one runs out. Then you'll just join the third bobbin and go until one of those runs out. Ideally you'll end up with just a bit on that last bobbin.

As I said, this takes some practice and some getting used to, because you really have to keep an eye on your bobbins as you work. And it requires that you make a lot of joins as you ply, but that's a good skill to have, and this will make you better at it.

If you're a newer spinner and you haven't yet settled into the hand positions and the rhythm of plying, get those down first, before you attempt this. In the meantime, you can use one of the other methods to deal with your leftovers.

Method 2: Making a Plying Bracelet

A plying bracelet allows you to ply from a single source of yarn. It's a way of wrapping your yarn around your hand that prevents it from tangling. When you end up with leftover singles, if you're making a two-ply yarn, you can wind the leftovers around your hand in this particular way and then you just join the two ends together, tie them to the rest of your yarn, and ply them. You'll end up with a two-ply yarn that's very similar, if not identical, to the yarn you've already plied, you'll get a bit of extra yardage, and you won't waste any of your precious singles.

An audio podcast is not the best way to teach people how to make a plying bracelet, so I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a video in which I demonstrate how to do this. (You'll need to be a Flock member to access it.) If you don't yet know how to make a plying bracelet, now is a great time to learn. It's useful in the situation we're talking about today, as a way to use up leftover singles, but it's also a great way to make samples quickly.

Method 3: Chain plying

If you're making a three-ply yarn and find yourself with leftover singles, you can chain ply the rest. The only situation in which this won't work is if you've started with a multicolored braid, because the colors will look different in the chain plied bit than they do in the rest of the yarn. But if the fiber you're spinning is a solid color you should end up with something usable. It won't be identical to the rest of the yarn, because a chain-plied yarn is not identical to a three-ply yarn, but the difference won't be very noticeable in your cloth, and if you really need the extra yardage, well then you really need the extra yardage. 

So there you have it: two methods for using up leftover singles, and one method for avoiding having leftover singles in the first place. I really hope this information is useful to you. Let me know in the dedicated discussion thread in The Flock! You can comment on this episode and discuss it with me and other listeners. The link is in the show notes, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. Just open up the description, click the link, and you'll be taken right to the thread. And if you don't know how to make a plying bracelet, check out my video demonstration. There's a link for that in the show notes as well.

Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with a show about how to troubleshoot common issues you may encounter when plying. If you have trouble with one ply wrapping around the other, or panic when one of your singles breaks or runs out during plying, or you don't know what to do if your doorbell rings in the middle of a plying session, you won't want to miss it. While you're waiting, try to carve out some time to spin something, even if it's just 10 minutes. I'm very confident that it will do you good.