Lamb and Frog

I have been a flying pool. Oh! Wait. In the immortal words of Willy Wonka (the Gene Wilder version) “strike that, reverse it.” I have been a plying fool. In more ways than one.

I plied probably 400 yards of merino (I haven’t counted yet). This fiber was originally in a colorway called ‘ice cream before bed’ but spinning and plying muted the once bright and crazy colors. So, the resulting yarn was christened ‘Fiona’s Bouquet’. Its namesake has a smile that lights you up like the sight of the first spring daffodils.

I also plied this green single (which I think answers the question “What do you get when you cross an alpaca with a leprechaun?” ) with a (second batch of handspun ever) white coopworth single.

Then I proceeded to ply what was left (quite a bit, obviously) of the white coopworth with my first-ever batch of handspun to create a ‘rustic’ (thick and thin, really messy) yarn that I am calling ‘chocolate-vanilla swirl’.

All this plying was quite the learning experience. I started with the merino. The singles had been sitting on the bobbins for a week or so waiting to be plied. I started plying and thought I was doing a pretty good job, but whenever I would hold out a yard or so of the plied yarn, it would twist back on itself like crazy which, if you were paying attention last time, means that the yarn is unbalanced. I started to get frustrated. I almost started to panic. Instead, I just thought, well, even if I can’t sell this yarn, maybe I can fix it so it will at least work for a felt project or something. So, I got online and put my mad skillz to work and found this article, which put my mind at rest. The article mentions two facts that I knew, but which I did not have the skill or the sense to consider together. First, as yarn sits on the bobbin, the twist relaxes (remember, these singles had been sitting for at least a week). Second, plying adds fresh twist in the opposite direction. So, a freshly plied yarn from relaxed singles may appear unbalanced during or right after plying. Usually, you have to wait until the yarn is washed and dried to to check for balance. The article, however, provides a quick, easy way to check for balance in the ‘yarn in process’ (read it if you’re interested).

The green and white yarn taught me a different lesson—what happens when you ply in the same direction you spin. The answer is nothing good.

You get a tangled mess of twisty chaos that is extremely difficult to ‘unply’ (although I am still trying). The second lesson learned from this minor disaster is that it is not a good idea to start plying 1) when you are tired and 2) right after you finished plying a single and you are tired.

Fortunately I realized what I was doing relatively early in the process and was able to ply the remaining singles into a reasonably balanced yarn in the ‘Vintage Rancho Rams’ colorway. If you are a rather-less-than-vintage Rancho Ram you may not be aware that the school colors were kelly green and white before they were their current (cheesehead wannabe) green and gold. Now, I am an LVHS Wildcat through and through (Wildcats rule! All other schools drool!), so why in the hell would I ply yarn in Rancho colors? Rancho is, after all, our arch rival and has been since the 1960s. Well, as hard as it is to admit, Mom, Aunt Connie, Uncle Clyde, and a host of their friends were Rams (Uncle Chuck was, by some act of Granny, spared the fate). So I figured as long as it was in the ‘vintage’ colors (mom and Aunt Connie are as vintage as it gets) no real harm done.

The chocolate-vanilla swirl was plied without incident. I’m done plying for a while; I’m back on singles as of today (it was supposed to be as of yesterday, but Dagmar and I got crazy sidetracked—I have her to thank for the most excellent pictures of the plied skeins).

Oh, one more thing. When you’re finishing your yarn. If you decide to thwap. Take off your glasses before you start.