Script for
Episode 151:
Big Spins: 5 Tips for Plying and Finishing
OK. You've spun all the singles for your big spin, and you've rewound them all onto storage bobbins. It's go time: you're ready to start plying. Here's what you need to know before you start.
Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to Episode 151 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. In today's episode, I've got five tips for you on plying and finishing your big spins. Let's get right into it.
1. Ply at random
The first tip is to ply at random. For a big spin, I might have between 20 and 30 storage bobbins. I spin singles until my wheel bobbin is full, then move those to storage bobbins. I'm able to get about an ounce onto a storage bobbin (I use the 6 inch shuttle bobbins from Schacht). As I fill the storage bobbins, I put them into a bag. And then I just pull from the bag at random and ply. My goal is to come up with skeins that look as much like each as possible, and this process has never failed me. Plus, I can use technique I talked about in episode 146 to avoid winding up with leftover singles.
2. Ensure even ply twist
I have an entire episode (it's 105) about ensuring even ply twist throughout a single skein. Here the task is a bit bigger: ensuring that every skein in my big spin has the same ply twist. There are a couple of ways to achieve this.
The first thing you want to do when you start plying is to sample. Consider making two samples with the same ply twist. Wash one of them. If you're happy with the washed sample, add some of the unwashed sample to the shipping tag you created to check your diameter as you spun the singles. Keep the tag with your wheel so you have it handy. That way you'll have something to check your plying against as you go.
Then you can count treadles, as I describe in episode 105, or you can just periodically stop plying, pull some of your plied yarn off your bobbin, and compare the ply twist to your unwashed sample. The latter is a great way to get even ply twist on an espinner, where you can't count treadles.
3. Take out the bits that you don't like
Here's a permission slip: just because you spun it, that doesn't mean that every single inch of your singles needs to end up in your plied yarn. You can take out the bits you don't love as you go. I almost never actually do this, because my singles are consistent enough for me that I don't feel the need to, but your mileage may vary: you may still be working on consistency or you may be more particular than I am. So just know that taking out bits that you don't like is an option that's available to you.
4. Settle in; you're going to be here a while
A couple of years ago I was having a little bit of back pain when plying. Not when spinning; only when plying. And that taught me that plying is its own thing, with slightly different ergonomics. While this was happening I developed the practice of only plying one skein a day. It's very tempting, when you're faced with 30 storage bobbins, to just ply and ply for hours--or at least it was tempting to me. Now I ply until I fill a bobbin (most of my bobbins hold about 4 ounces), make it into a skein, set it aside, and do another one the next day.
5. Finish your big spin
Note that I just said to set your skein aside after you ply it. That's because for big spins I like to finish all the yarn at once. That way I can ensure that all the skeins get finished in the exact same way. This is particularly important if I'm going to full the yarn at all; I want to make sure that all the skeins get the same amount of agitation and that they are moved from hot water to cool water the same number of times and that the temperature of the hot and warm baths is consistent across the skeins.
An important caveat about finishing multiple skeins at once is that you want to make sure that the yarn is in a big enough container with enough water in it that it has plenty of room to move around. So much happens during this part of the process: fibers plump up and move around, and the twist evens out and finally (in a plied yarn) comes to rest. The fiber needs space to move to enable all of this, so use a big container!
Summary
Ply at random
Keep your ply twist even
Take out the bits you don't like
Settle in: you're going to be here for a while
Finish the whole spin at once if you can; if you can't make sure you finish the whole skein the same way
There's a dedicated discussion thread in The Flock where you can comment on this episode and discuss it with me and other listeners. The link is in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. So just open up the description for this episode, click the link, and you'll be taken right to the thread.
Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Before we close, I've got an announcement. I am about to start working on a project I'm really excited about. Breed School, my twelve-month breed study course, is coming back. I've completely revised the list of breeds we'll be working with, and I'm going to reshoot all of the lessons, which include 12 sampling videos, in which I'll demonstrate spinning that month's breed, and twelve bonus lessons on various spinning topics. The doors will open in June, and I'm going to have my work cut out for me getting everything ready before then. So I've decided to put making new episodes on hold for the month of May and just focus on Breed School.
So, in May, as a warm up to launching the new version of Breed School, we'll be pulling some of our episodes on wool types out of the archives and replaying them for you. I really hope you enjoy listening to them, perhaps for the first time or perhaps as a refresher.
Thank you so much for listening, friend. I'll be back June 6 with a brand new episode. Until then, spin something! I promise it will do you good.