I quit

My involvement in the plant-based diet classes is coming to a premature end. It's just too extreme for me. I felt better for a while - more energetic - but then started to feel worse. I am also skeptical of any diet that requires supplements - I'd rather eat my minerals and vitamins. And while I understand the point in reporting one's food intake and exercise for the sake of accountability, it felt somewhat infantilizing. I learned some things, tried some new foods and recipes, have a freezer full of plant-based soups, but feel like I can continue on my own without being quite so extreme.

Knitting: I haven't been able to bring myself to work on the socks nor the hat, which means I am dissatisfied with both. I think I'll start over with the socks, maybe abandon the hat for now.
Spinning: All the bobbins that contained singles are now plied. There are still a couple with already-plied yarn that need to be emptied.

BFL and SeaCell, chain-plied

When I first learned to spin, I had a difficult time with plying. Instead of going ahead and struggling with it, I kept filling up bobbins with singles, then bought more bobbins to fill up with singles. Taking classes at Ply Away helped me over that hump, so now I have WAY more bobbins that one spinner needs.

A trick I learned at PlyAway

Last spring I attended PlyAway. I learned a lot but wasn't sure much of it stuck in this sieve-like brain of mine. One idea I did retain was plying with silk to create a stronger yarn for weaving. I finally actually tried this out - well, the plying part, not the weaving part, yet.

This is a 3-ply yarn. Two plies I spun from some unknown roving, the third is commercial silk. I'm pleased with the results. (For the record, I spun this on my Ashford Joy 2 wheel, one notch down, then plied it on the same wheel but an additional notch down.) The silk adds a bit of sheen to the yarn, which I hope you can see in the photo below. If I were spinning a thicker yarn, the silk would probably disappear into the wool.

The logistics of adding the silk ply were surprisingly difficult because the silk was on a cone. I tried to simply put the cone on my 3-bobbin lazy kate, but the brake wouldn't keep the silk from spooling off too fast. I eventually unspooled some silk onto a swift but I had to put a rubber band around the shaft to keep it from spooling off too fast. If I decided to do more of this, I will just put the silk onto a bobbin of its own so I can put it on the lazy kate with the others.

Another plying experiment

A while back, I blogged about plying commercial yarn to create a bulkier end product. While my efforts worked, I wasn't that thrilled with the outcome. Recently it occurred to me that maybe I would like the results better if I first un-plied the commercial yarn, then plied more of it together. It couldn't hurt to try.

What I did was take samples of worsted weight yarn - Patons 100% wool, which is a 3-ply - and unplied each sample onto a separate bobbin. In other words, each bobbin contained all three plies but untwisted. Initially, I plied the yarn from two bobbins, creating a 6-ply yarn. Then I tested plying three samples together, from three bobbins, for a 9-ply. For each result, I set the twist using my usual method: soak yarn in warm water for 20 minutes, press out the moisture, then swing the skein around and around, finishing with a few snaps before hanging it in the shower to dry.

From left, 3-ply, 6-ply, 9-ply

I like the resulting yarn better than plying together plied yarn. The wraps-per-inch (wpi) were not as differentiated as I thought they would be, but do indicate I now have fatter yarn. The 9-ply would be good for weaving tapestries.

3-ply

6-ply

9-ply

For comparison purposes, here is a pic of commercial 3-ply rug yarn. If I wanted to create a yarn fat enough for rugs, I would have to start with fatter yarn, maybe bulky or even super bulky. Perhaps I will try that next.

3-ply rug yarn

Do you know of anyone else experimenting with yarn like this? I'd like to compare notes.

Tightly plied

The frustrations I outlined in my previous posts got the better of me and I took a holiday from fiber for a while. That means a holiday from blogging as well. But recently I have at least picked up the baby cable socks - and am finally past the toes! - and am spinning again.

Much as I enjoy spinning, I hate, hate, hate plying. That is because I find it awkward, plus I am never very satisfied with the result. In October, I went to a spin-in at my enabler's shop and brought along some yarn I had spun from BFL top to be critiqued. Betty confirmed that the ply could be tighter, but otherwise thought it was a fine skein of yarn.

At this same spin-in, I was spinning a fine thread of some unknown roving. Another spinner commented on the fineness and suggested I move the drive belt on my wheel a notch, to achieve a tighter twist. This made a big difference! About a week later (I'm a little slow), it occurred to me that I could do the same when plying - move the belt a notch to put more twist into the yarn when plying without having to change my already awkward technique.

Since I had more BFL singles, I tested this idea. And it worked! Previously, I was getting 3.5 to 4 twists per inch, now it is more like 5 to 6. That doesn't sound like a big difference, but I could see right away that the yarn looked "smarter" (if that makes any sense).

I still have a ways to go before I achieve better consistency in both spinning and plying, but I feel like I am finally making some progress.

Plying experiment, part deux

A couple of posts back, I discussed plying commercial worsted yarn to create a (super)bulky yarn for tapestry weaving. I decided to weave up a sample, on my 3-in-1 Swatch Maker. That makes this a double experiment, as I was not sure how the Swatch Maker would work for a tapestry sample.

For this experiment, I warped every other slot, creating 4 EPIs instead of 8. This was because of the thickness of the weft yarn; still, it was difficult to beat the yarn hard enough to hide the 8/4 cotton warp. I meant to take a photo of the work in progress, to illustrate how I used bamboo US9 DPNs to open the shed on the Swatch Maker. The DPNs also helped keep the fabric from sliding down the warp threads when I beat, but just barely.

The finished swatch measures 5.25" x 2.75", and is rather thick, more like a rug than a tapestry. I like the effect of the three colors plied, then woven; I could see plying yellow, orange, and red, for weaving a sunset. One negative was the yarn becoming untwisted as I worked with it. Next time, I will try shocking the yarn more when setting the twist.

A plying experiment

I like tapestry weaving. I have woven samplers with both worsted and bulky yarn. They each have their pros and cons.

I have a TON of worsted weight yarn. I don't want to buy any new yarn until I've used up more of what I already have. But what if I want to use a bulky yarn?

I have two spinning wheels. I know how to spin and ply yarn. It occurred to me that I could ply the worsted yarn to create a bulky yarn. Apparently, not too many people have tried playing commercial yarn (or else Google is bad at locating them despite a variety of search criteria). So I decided to give it a try.

What little information I was able to glean about plying commercial yarn indicated that it is important to reverse the twist, which meant Z-twist for these samples. Chain plying was also recommended. Chain plying creates a three-ply yarn from one ply. For comparison purposes, I not only chain plied one yarn, I three-plied some as well.

I was a little concerned the plies would not "stick" together, so I left the samples on the spool for a few days before setting the twist by soaking the skeins for 20 minutes in warm water, then swinging them around before hanging them to air dry. Except for the ends, the plies adhered reasonably well.

Above is the three ply: blue is Lambs Pride, gray is Cascade 220, pink is Manos del Uruguay Maxima. Below is the Lambs Pride chain plied. The three-ply feels loftier than the chain-ply, yet came out a bit ahead on wraps per inch (6-7 vs. 5-6); they both are closer to super bulky than bulky. The twist is tighter with the chain ply.

The next step is to actually weave a swatch or two with these samples. I may also try a two-ply, to see if I get closer to bulky instead of super bulky. This experiment is to be continued....