I was once asked “How did you learn so much about computers…did you take a bunch of classes or something?” “No,” I responded, “I’ve just broken them in every way possible to do so and had to fix them myself.” Some lessons just don’t sink in unless you learn them the hard way. For example, not plying in the same direction you spun the singles.
Since I learned that lesson, I’ve spun and plied quite a bit of new yarn (for sale on etsy if you’re interested) without any major mishaps:
(And you wondered why I hadn’t been writing!)
I even learned how to chain (Navajo) ply. I taught myself using video tutorials, this book, and information on Ravelry’s spinning forums. The technique itself is not difficult. A little fiddly maybe, but if you’ve crocheted, the concept is straightforward enough.
In chain plying you make a three-ply yarn from a single strand (usually I ply two singles together into a single two-ply yarn). The technique has some disadvantages: it is less forgiving of poorly spun singles (e.g., thin or thick spots in the yarn are plied together instead of getting balanced by the other strand as usually happens) and, because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it creates a yarn that may not be as strong as a standard, twisted three-ply. It also has some advantages: it preserves the color sequencing in the single and you don’t end up with leftover singles (which happens when you’ve spun more yardage onto one bobbin than another and then plied two bobbins together).
I decided to practice using leftover singles from the batches above. The first time it was easy. Too easy. So easy that I got overconfident. A couple of weeks later, after finishing some traditional plying, I decided to go ahead and ‘quickly’ chain ply the leftover singles. Heh, heh, heh. It didn’t go so easy this time. I made a mess of it.* I got frustrated. I finished making my mess, returned to my regularly scheduled knitting (more on that in a future post), and (not surprisingly) continued to obsess about what had gone wrong. And, of course, I figured it out.
The first time I tried chain plying I studied the technique and then got right to the wheel. The second time (because the first had been so easy), I didn’t even think about doing a ‘refresher’, I just sat down and started spinning, forgetting the one crucial bit of information I needed to make the effort a success—when you’re learning to chain ply it’s best to use the slowest possible ratio (the biggest whorl) on your wheel. I had left mine where it was for the regular plying (on the middle of the three choices on the plying head). Drat. But as with pretty much all lessons learned the hard way, I’m pretty sure this one is gonna stick.
*The singles were for practice only and I’m probably just going to use the resulting three-ply for embroidery practice, so no big loss, but still…argh.
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