1.
Spinning. So, you got
your first spindle and figured out how to spin it. The next step is to spin it with actual wool.
If the sense of adventure has not abandoned you at this point, congratulations, you are an optimist!
Most of adventurous first timers end up with thread that often resembles a skinny python that ate a fat chicken.
If hope had not been abandoned at this point, the thread will equalize into a skinny tree snake, occasionally getting
lucky and swallowing a frog or two.
Most people graduate to spaghetti-like thread and become unable to
portrait reptiles in their spinning. Like an embryonic tail, people lose the ability to make “unique”,
aka lumpy, bumpy and artsy, yarn. Most have to resort to taking expensive classes. So,
enjoy your ability while it lasts, for it is a rare ability to retain…….
2.
Plying. You don’t have to do it… although it is strongly
recommended, it is not necessary for every project. A single thread can be used successfully, but it will
have several disadvantages: it will not be as sturdy and wear resistant, because of the one-way twist,
it can be unbalanced and will pull the finished garment which will have to be dealt with in the end. The
advantage is a simpler process.
Plying is a process where you are not creating
new thread, you are joining two single threads together. There are a number of ways to accomplish this.
If you already figured out how to spin, this is a bit easier because you will be just putting twist into an existing
thread.
You
can either wind your thread on two chopsticks more or less equally (put hem into two separate brown paper bags and tie a knot
to join the together and then start spinning them on the spindle), or you can figure out how to do Andean plying by watching
youtube videos. I strongly recommend it because it is invaluable when you only have one spindle, or not
a lot of thread.
The most important thing is to ply IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION of how you were spinning.
3. Making
a skein. If you don’t have a niddy-noddy kicking around your house, and no, it is not your
free loading cousin, or something you drink, you can always resort to enlisting accomplices into your daring pursuits.
Find a willing victim, um, I mean an assistant, a helpless chair, um, I mean a useful tool, and wind the yarn on so
that all the loops are the same size and have more or less equal tension. Then tie them in 4 places with
any thread you got and dunk it into a bucket of hot water with a drop of dish soap for 30 min.
When the experiment is over, you
can hang your yarn to drip dry and use it when it is fully dried. If you want to knit or crochet with it,
you should make a center pull ball. You can use the wooden spoon handle, a pencil or anything long and
smooth…….
If your ball of yarn vaguely resembles a shaved porcupine
or an angry possum, do not despair, it still smells better than any of them and has no ancestral relationship with the dust
balls that occasionally may hide under your neighbor’s sofa, (never yours, of course).
Good Luck! And as the Navajo say, you can’t complain
until the 7th skein………
