Rank Amateur
I am a crap spinner. No, really. Crap. I have no skill. I have put in very little practice. My approach to date has been ‘pretend…I’m sure if I just pretend, I’ll grasp it by instinct without the application of any effort.’ So far, not much success, but it is amusing. This usually does not bother me much. One of the benefits of this method is that I don’t spend any time spinning, so my deficiencies don’t have much opportunity to trouble me.
But this Saturday I decided to clean out the stash. One of the things uncovered in the stash was some spinning fiber (really rather a lot of it, given that I don’t spin). The vast majority of it went right back into the stash to continue lowering at me from the corner of the closet. But there was one wee bit I couldn’t resist.
I think I bought this back in 2009 at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet festival. I don’t remember who sold it or precisely what the fiber content is. The only thing I remember is that the label said the shimmery bits were milk fiber, which I thought was hugely amusing.
So what I found in the closet were two singles already finished and sitting on toilet paper tubes (I put them on my ball winder and wind off my spindle onto them…keeps tension in the center when I take it off the ball winder), and one partial one that was spun…differently. It loooooks (and really, this was years ago and I have no memory of doing it, so I could be totally wrong) like I divided the fiber into quarters, spun two of the quarters into two skinny(ish) singles, and intended to spin the other half into one fatter single. I was half way through that fatter one. I wanted a distraction from the final steps of the stash clean up, so I thought I’d give it a try. This was the remaining fluff.
It was oddly easy. An hour later, it was done.
I took it all of my spindle and took the other singles off the toilet paper tubes, just to get a sense of what I had. I gave it all a bit of a soak and a hang (no idea if it’s ok to do this with singles, but since this had just been taking up closet space for years, I’m obviously not all that invested in it). Now it looks like this (still slightly damp).
That’s two skinny (ish) and one fat(ish) strands. I’ll jury rig some sort of lazy kate (no really, it involves a plastic storage bin, knitting needles, hair elastics, and toilet paper tubes, that’s the kindest term you could apply) and see what happens. I’m predicting heartbreak and profanity, but it should at least be amusing.
You can try knitting needles poked through a shoebox, with the toilet paper rolls on the knitting needles.
I’m a newish spinner (just started this year) but from what I’ve gathered it’s fine to wash your singles if you’re going to use them as singles. However, if you’re planning to ply them you might have wanted to wait to wash them until afterwards since it sets the twist. But it can’t hurt to see what happens! It’s lovely fiber.
I second the above comment about washing and how it affects twist.
As a newish spinner, I suggest skipping the lazy kate and winding plying balls instead. Basically, wrap 2, 3 or as many singles as you want to ply together and wrap them all around a single round object – tennis ball or whatever. Make you keep them all tensioned evenly so there aren’t any stray coils sticking out of your yarn. When you’re ready to spin, put the ball in a bowl and start plying them all together.
It’s less work than rigging up a lazy kate, uses fewer materials, takes up less space, and is easier to ply from. It’s also my favorite way to wrangle yarn for spindle plying.
I’ve got some photos of the whole process over on my blog: http://www.studiostrategos.com/blog/2012/5/4/how-to-wind-a-plying-ball.html
I’ve been spinning for many years and one of my favorite ways of plying when I’m using a drop spindle is Andean Plying. It’s a way of winding the yarn off your spindle and onto your hand in such a way that you can pull both ends of the yarn off your hand to make a 2 ply. You have no left overs at the end because your basically folding the entire length of yarn in half. There are lots of tutorials on the web.