Do you sometimes finish a plied yarn only to find that it has way too much or way too little ply twist? In this episode, I'll share how I ensure the right amount of ply twist for a balanced yarn. And I'm also going to ask just how important balance is anyway. Hello there, darling sheepspotter. Welcome to episode 104 of the Sheepspot Podcast. cast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
I went through a spinning stage during which I was over-plying every single yarn I spun. And so after I made a few positively rope-like yarns, I figured that I needed to rethink my approach to ply twist. And I kind of set about a series of experiments to figure out how to make it easier for me to put the right amount of ply twists into my yarn. And I developed a method to determine very quickly at the wheel whether my ply
was over-twisted, under-twisted, or just right. And by just right, in this case, I mean balanced. So I'm going to unveil that method in this episode. But first, I want to just say a few words about balanced yarns. So when we're talking about yarn, a balanced yarn is one in which the singles twist is balanced by the ply twist. And the individual fibers in the yarn are pointing straight up and down. They're parallel to the sides of the strand of yarn.
They're not angled toward one side or the other. Now, whether it matters to you that your yarn is balanced or not depends on what you plan to do with it. If you're planning a project in which you're going to be knitting stockinette stitch, a lack of balance may make your fabric bias or tilt to one side or the other. And in some situations this can really be a problem.
There are some ways to mitigate this by using smaller needles or changing your stitch pattern to one with a balance between knit and purl stitches but it's not something that will block out because the extra singles or ply twist is actually pushing the stitches in one direction or the other. That said, there are a lot of situations in which you might not want a balanced yarn.
When I spin a sock yarn, for example, I like to add a little bit of extra ply twist because it makes the yarn more resistant to wear. Extra ply twist is something to consider whenever your highest priority is that the yarn will be hard wearing. I've actually never had a problem with biasing in a project of my own. That may be an effect of what I knit and how I knit it, so your mileage may definitely vary.
The best way to test whether a particular yarn is going to bias in your stitch pattern is, as always, to sample and swatch. But let's say for the sake of argument that you are going for a balanced yarn in this case. How do you make sure that you actually end up with a balanced yarn? So I'm going to tell you about three ways to do this, and I will talk about the one that I use most often last. So the first method is to make a plyback sample when you first spin your singles.
So to make a plyback sample, you pull some yarn off the bobbin, and you do want to pull it directly off the bobbin because your yarn is going to continue to accumulate twist until it's fully wound onto the bobbin core. And so, to get the most accurate results, you want to pull it directly off the bobbin. And you want to just be working with the yarn that has wound around the bobbin core when you're doing this.
So, you're going to to pull some yarn off the bobbin, you're going to fold it, and you're going to let it ply on itself. If you're planning a three-ply yarn, you're going to want to fold it twice. And this can be a little tricky to do, but you will get it with practice. It just takes a little bit of practice. And so what your plyback sample tells you is what those singles would look like if they were plied to balance.
So you make your plyback sample and make a good long one, you know, 24 inches or so, and put it aside. Keep it with the fiber for the project so you can use it as a reference point when you're plying. Then when you start plying, when you get to that stage, you compare your plied yarn to your sample, to your plyback sample. Remember though, and this is what we talked about last week, remember that your singles twist has by this time gone to sleep.
When you finish this yarn, that twist is going to wake up. So you need to add a little bit more twist to your ply than you have in your plyback sample. Then you just figure out how many treadles it took you to get to that amount of twist, establish a rhythm, keep to that rhythm, and voila, you should be good to go. And I'm going to talk more about exactly how to do that in the next episode. So that's the first method, is to make a plyback sample, keep it.
That's always the hard part for me. uh i tend to misplace them and uh make a ply back sample keep it compare your plied yarn to your ply back sample put in a little bit of extra ply twist to compensate for the fact that the dormant twist in the singles is going to wake up and away you go that's the first method the second method is just to look really closely at the fibers in your yarn if they are straight and they're not leaning to one side or the other, you're close.
But again, you need to add a little extra twist in the plying direction to compensate for that dormant singles twist. So you actually want the fibers to be leaning a little bit in the plying direction. And if you've plied your yarn S, or counterclockwise, that means you want the fibers to lean a little bit to the left. This method is a bit easier with worsted yarns when the fibers are aligned. It's just easier to see where they're heading than it is with woolen yarn, so just bear that in mind.
And then finally, the third method is what I actually do most of the time. And I do this because I usually forget to make a plyback sample, or if I do make a plyback sample, I can't find it when I need it. So this technique does not require a plyback sample. My students have dubbed this the plyback of the ply, and here's how it works. So, I ply a bit, and then I pull some of the plied yarn off the bobbin and let it twist back on itself. And it should twist back on itself.
If it doesn't ply back on itself at all, but just hangs in a loop, once your singles twist comes back during finishing, you're going to have an under-plied yarn. So you want it to ply back on itself, and I like it to ply back on itself decisively, but gently. For me, this is the easiest and fastest way to determine whether I'm going to end up with a balanced yarn. And with a little bit of experience and a little bit of practice, you'll learn what decisively but gently looks like.
And you could easily figure this out, I think, in an afternoon just by making a few samples and testing. So if it plies back on itself and it looks like X, that's going to give me a balanced yarn, or that's going to be a little underplied, or that's going to be a little overplied. Just three samples, and you can probably work this out, and then you can just use this method at your wheel, and it's just easy.
You'll discover quickly how you want your plyback of the ply to look for the results that you are looking for. But what if you get it wrong? You ply, you finish, and your yarn doesn't hang in a nice open loop when it's dry. So if the skein twists multiple times after it's been washed and dried, there's a simple fix for that.
If it's twisting in the Z direction, that means it has too much S-twist, so you can just run it back through your wheel in the Z-direction clockwise to add a little bit more. If it's twisting in the S-direction, that means it has too much Z-twist and it needs more S-twist. And in that case, you would run it through your wheel counterclockwise. Now, it can be easy to overdo this correction.
So if you're working with a treadle wheel, use a big whirl treadle slowly if you're working on an e-spinner turn your speed way down because unless something has gone really massively long wrong in your initial plying you're really just making a little tweak to the twist here um and you can check how you're doing by checking the alignment of the fibers periodically so that you don't overdo it so just check and make sure that The fibers are running parallel to the sides of the strand of yarn.
Now, if the skein twists just a little bit in one direction or the other, and I'm otherwise happy with it, I usually just go on my merry way and don't worry about it. In my experience, it is not enough to make a difference. But again, your mileage may vary, so please do swatch.
Uh so those are the three methods that you can use to ensure that you get uh the right amount of ply twist you can either compare to a ply back sample look at the fibers at the alignment of the fibers um are they leaning one way or the other or you can do the good old ply back of the ply and when your plied yarn plies back on itself firmly but gently you're probably in the ballpark, so i want to know from you are you always going for a balanced yarn or are there
times when you deliberately over or under ply how do you figure out how much ply twist is enough when you're plying. Is ply twist something that you find challenging? Let me know. As always, there is a dedicated thread in the Flock Cheap Spots free online community for inquisitive hand spinners where you can discuss or comment on this episode. Here's how to join the discussion in three easy steps. Number one, find the show notes.
They are right in the description of this episode in your podcast app. No need to go to the website. Number two, you're going to click on the link to the discussion thread. And if you're a member of the flock, you're going to be whizzed directly to it. If not, you will have to join the flock first. It is completely free. And then you will be whizzed to the discussion. And step number three, join the conversation. That's it. Very Very easy. So, that is it for me this time, darling sheep spotter.
Thank you so much for listening, friend. I really appreciate it. And I will be back next week with some tips on maintaining even ply twists throughout your skein. Until then, make some time to spin something. You know it's going to do you good.