I’ve been working on spinning yarn using some new-to-me techniques over the past week or so.  It all started when I decided to spin up one of the batts that I made back in July, when I borrowed Kate’s drumcarder.  I’d been photographing them to put into my Ravelry stash, and I thought I should start using them. The particular batt in question was yellow, blue and white.  However, when I pulled it apart to begin spinning, I was surprised to find a layer of green in the middle.  The green was definitely added as a color, and not just a blend of the yellow and blue.

I didn’t put much thought into what I wanted to spin, I just sat down with the batt and started spinning.  When I had spun all 2.25 ounces as a single one one bobbin, I realized that I would have to decide what to do with it.  I’d spun it tightly enough that I didn’t feel that it would make a suitable single.  It would be too wiry as a single, so it definitely needed to be plied to soften it (this is what I get for not thinking about what/how I want to spin).

So, I explored my plying options.  I could navajo ply it on itself.  But, the color repeats in the single were short and the colors often wrapped around each other, and I didn’t think that this was an optimal case for this type of plying.  I could spin a single in one of the colors from the batt and make a two-ply yarn.  But, I had wanted to just use this fiber by itself.  I’m not sure what I want to do with the coordinating solid colors, but I wasn’t prepared to use them yet.

All that left me with (that I know of) was plying with another yarn.  I’ve got Intertwined which is all about making art yarns.  It’s been used before when I attempted the supercoil yarn, which I was very pleased with.  I remembered that there was instructions for thread plying yarn in the book.  I have a huge cone of royal blue wool/mohair blend lace weight that I picked up for next to nothing at the thrift store.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use it.

The important technique to remember when thread-plying a yarn is that the thread should be held with tension and the single allowed to wrap around it at an angle (as seen above), with only a little tension applied.    I’ve attempted thread-plying once before, and I did it the other way, allowing the thread to wrap around the yarn.  That skein is a bit of a disaster.  The thread is loose and sticks out from the yarn all over, which is not the effect I had been going for.

Depending upon the angle at which you hold the yarn against the thread, and the thickness of the single you can achieve different effects with plying.  Above you can see that just the thickness of the single changed as I kept the angle of the yarn against the thread consistent.   For the most part, my single was fairly thin compared to the yarns I see in the book and the art yarns that I’ve seen other people spin.

After the plying was finished, the wrapped yarn filled a good portion of the bobbin.  I’m a little concerned about how much the yarn seems to stick out from the base thread.  If you look at the yellow towards the middle of the bobbin in the photo below, you can see what I mean.  The single seems to almost float around the thread.  That is very different than the relationship between the thread and yellow single at the left/back end of the bobbin.  There, the two seem to form a gentle wave.  I’m hoping that when the yarn is wound off the bobbin and then soaked, that the arrangement of the yarn and thread will even out a bit.

This yarn is still sitting on the bobbin and needs to be soaked, dried and measured.  Photos of the final yarn are coming soon.