Love's Labor Lost
I guess I was due for a bit of a come-uppance with my spindling. I was hoping that I could turn that reasonable bit of roving into a two-ply that I would actually have enough of to knit a little something with. It was quite a bit of yarn, but I thought I would just make another one of those Andean plying bracelets (albeit a big one) and ply up a nice robust skein.
But it was not to be.
The Niddy noddy contains the small amount of yarn that got plied before I encountered a tangle I just couldn't deal with. Okay, I clipped it and tried again, but came upon another tangle. It seemed like too much to deal with easily, so I thought I would just wind it off onto something else and try plying it in a smaller batch. I got some of it (the single skein to the left). But then I encountered another tangled mess that I couldn't defeat. I just couldn't find a way to deal with it that wouldn't end up in far too many un-pliable fragments.
It may not look like much, but I think it's over a third of what I spun!
In the trial and error learning spirit that I talked about yesterday, I am just going to keep it as a remembrance to not get carried away with trying to ply too much yarn from an Andean plying bracelet. I think I just tried to wrap too much too tightly. Especially for a tiny thin yarn that has a tendency to want to twist on itself, tangle or otherwise bond with itself. Much better to start from two separate center pull balls, I think.
The question for me now? How do you experienced spinners get two balls or roughly equal length to ply together. Do you measure out the roving into pieces of equal weight? Do you spin and then measure the length and divide in two? Do you just guess an hope it all works out?
Aww, it looks so pretty. At lest you learned something :)
Ah, sorry it didn't work! I just tried the Andean Ply for the first time yesterday, which worked but I only had 15 grams... can you salvage some stuff?
I pretty much guess on how much I'm going to need for the center-pull balls. After I ply from them and one of them runs out, I just do the Andean plying bracelet with the remainder of the other ball, spit-splice the end of the first ball to the end of the second, and keep spinning. The bracelet usually isn't a problem because there isn't that much fiber left on the second ball.
I'm not an experienced spinner, but I try to split my roving into equal pieces -- that works pretty well for me.
An experienced spinner told me that she winds her singles into a center pull ball and plies from both ends of it. I did see her do this in person and it worked beautifully.
I'm not all that experienced a spinner, but so far, I've been guessing.
I don't worry about the equal parts thing. The reason? It is so easy to take the leftover bit of one ball/bobbin, divide it half (it should be pretty small at that point), spit splice or spin together one half of the leftover with the run-out ply and seamlessly finish your plying. No knots, no problems.
I usually split my roving into roughly equal pieces and pray for the best (grin). I am, however, still trying to figure out how to fix it when my singles break while I'm plying!
When I am plying two singles spun from the same top, I weigh the top before spinnning so that I have approximately the same amount on each bobbin (I spin on a wheel, not a spindle, but the principle should be the same). What I did the last time, because I was too lazy to use the scales, I just measured two equal lengths of top.
celia
I ran into a similar problem the other day when I was trying to ply my very first handspun - I had a lot of it on the spindle and when I tried to use the Andean Bracelet method, I realized quickly that it was much too tight and there was too much of it to stay easily on my wrist (or even get down onto my wrist). I kept forming the bracelet, though, and when I was done, I had a centerpull ball with two ends - I pulled it off my hand, stuck an empty toilet-paper tube in the center and used that to ply from. It actually worked out quite well - there was one tangle I ran into that eventually I had to snip, but after that I was fine. I don't know if it would work all the time, but it worked out okay this time!
I'm a pretty experienced spinne. I prefer to use a single center pull ball and ply from the center and edge strands of yarn. I have to stop sometimes and it's easier for me to do this from a center pull ball. The best tip I can give for this is to make sure you keep your ball close to whatever hand you are using to draft the two strands of yarn onto the spindle. If your ball is too far away from this hand, the two singles will twist onto themselves where you don't want them to, below your hand and next to the yarn ball instead of near to the spindle. If this happens, you will have to stop and untwist the strands. Because the ball of yarn should be kept close to your drafting hand, you need to either ply short lengths of yarn and wind these onto the spindle, or keep the ball close to your hand some other way. I hold the ball in my hand and put one or two fingers between the two strands of yarn to keep them separated before I ply them together. You can also put the ball in a small bag and hold this below your wrist as you ply.
Another suggestion is to try the wooden Andean plyer available from PJ Handcrafts: http://pjhandcrafts.com/plyer.html. I haven't tried one, but this might help.
Good luck.
Theresa, it sounds like you are ready for a spinning wheel! That makes plying so much easier.
As far as lengths go, I usually measure by "eyeball," meaning how consistent my yarns are on my bobbins. Then I eyeball amount on the bobbins and ply with a lazy kate. Often I am close - but off by a few yards.
However, when I did drop spindling, the plying process was difficult until I wound the singles together into a ball. Sometimes I would just use my ballwinder to wind the two together for a center-pull ball. If I wanted a two-ply, I wound the singles together before plying them on the spindle. This way, too, you get the right amount of yardage.
If you have to knot two singles together to create the correct length for a 2-ply, it is not a big deal as far as I can see, especially if you are knitting - I just push them to the back of my project and later weave them in.
Hope this helps. Also, I have been enjoying your blog.
I've been spinning for over 10 years--I generally wind a centerpull ball and use both ends. If you own a nostepinde you can leave the ball on it, otherwise, I generally keep my thumb in the hole. This helps to keep the ball from collapsing and tangling.
The Peruvian bracelet works best with shorter, thicker singles and for some reason it doesn't work *AT ALL* with silk. (you don't want to know how I know this)