Plying!

Over the weekend I finished spinning all the singles for the dark cranberry colored wool I've been spinning throughout the tour. I wound plying balls on Saturday and that was a learning experience in itself. The oldest single was in the worst shape so it was kind of awesome to see the progress forward from that original single. The last single I spun wasn't perfect by any means, but had much smoother joins and was far more consistent over all. It also didn't take nearly as much time as that first single. If Tour de Fleece has only done one thing for me it is that it has sped up my spinning.

That being said, my plying certainly leaves something to be desired. It's okay, but gets funky in places and I think I under-plied on this first skein. It looked like I over-plied while it was on the spindle, but once I set the twist and it dried it settled to be under-plied. I've only had the opportunity to ply a handful of times before this, and the last time was in March or April. It's like when I first learned to knit and I had to cast on for a new project. The last one had taken so long to finish that I'd forgotten how to cast on and had to look it up again. I'm hoping I catch on to plying a little more this time around and that, like the singles, each yard of yarn looks a little better than the last yard.

I ended up with something between a fingering weight and sport weight and when I figure out how much yardage I have after I set the twist we'll see what this yarn becomes. I'm reading more about decisions you can make about your fiber and how you spin to get different results, but I don't know that I'm ready to do much of that yet or if I should just keep spinning as I am for more singles experience. For now I'm plying up the singles I have and I'll decide what/how to spin next in a few days when all this plying is done.


I do know that I need to be sure to divide my fiber next time before I spin. When I started spinning this fiber, I just pulled a chunk off and started spinning. When the spindle felt "full enough" I wound the single onto something else and started spinning with more fiber. I realized about half way through that I had no idea how much was going into any of those cops because I didn't plan ahead.

Next time = planning ahead a little better.