To some spinners, ply is an afterthought, something they’d like to skip or rush through, something they do the same way every time for every project and yarn. I see these spinners disappointed with their yarns and knitting. Their knitted stitches don’t look quite right. They question their fiber, their draft, their wheel, their ability to spin. The fix, however, can be as simple as changing their ply. Or just thinking about their ply.
Plying is combining two or more singles in the opposite direction that they were spun in. The singles are twisted (not drafted) while they are held under identical tension, so that the twist enters both (or all) the singles at the same time. (The exception is textured and art yarns, which you may purposely hold under different tensions to get special effects.) Sounds simple doesn’t it? It is simple, and there is huge potential for creating particular types of yarns that will enhance your knitting, not fight against it. Plying is one of the magical skills of spinning. It can make singles that are just okay into yarn that is amazing. It offers more design possibilities than you may have thought imaginable, such as the following:
The singles on the right may look a bit uneven, but plying it, as shown on the left, evens out the thin and fat spots.
The plied yarn on the right is about the same size as the thick singles on the left.
Ply to create a new fiber blend. This yarn is a combination of a 50 Merino/50 Tencel blend plied with Bluefaced Leicester.
Create interestingly textured yarns by experimenting with different plying or singles techniques.
From left to right: (a) A finished 2-ply yarn spun from singles originally spun to be used as singles; (b) an unfinished singles spun to remain singles; (c) an unfinished singles spun to be plied; (d) a finished 2-ply spun from singles spun with enough twist to ply. The twist angle difference between the two singles is approximately 30 percent.
The basic theory about why a singles that will be plied needs more twist than a singles that will stand alone is this: because of the plying! When a singles is plied, the yarn is twisted in the opposite direction from the way you spun it into singles, thus untwisting some of the singles twist.
Sometimes my 2-ply yarns look softer than I expect. The singles look untwisted and not very substantial. I’ve always wondered how much twist is lost in plying. I knew that some was, but how much? Using the same fiber, I spun some samples, leaving some of the yarn as singles and plying another part of it. When I measured and compared the twist in the singles and in the plied yarn, I found that the twist angle was 27 percent higher in the singles than in the plied yarn. That’s a lot of twist to lose. Now I know to pay more attention to my singles’ twist angles. (For more information on twist and bias, see Digging into Your Stash and Why Not Weight?)
To ply, you need some basic equipment: a wheel or spindle, singles to ply, and something to hold the singles. That’s it. Of course, there are many tools to help you ply, but I’ve made good plied yarn with two hand-wound balls of singles, each in its own bowl, and a handspindle. The tools I usually use, however, are a wheel, the bobbins holding the singles, a lazy kate to hold the bobbins, measuring equipment, and a control card (for information about control cards, see here). Other tools I find useful are storage bobbins and a bobbin winder, a ball winder or nostepinder, a niddy noddy, tags or bands, and a permanent marker.
Plying goes faster than spinning singles, so I set my wheel with a little extra pull. When I ply a yarn spun worsted in the singles, I use a little less twist in the ply than I do with a woolen-spun singles; when I ply a yarn spun woolen in the singles, I use a little more twist than I do with a worsted-spun singles to help build the structure. (The exception to adding extra pull is if you are manipulating your yarn in some way, especially with textured and art yarns, such as coils, spirals, and bouclés.)
I place my lazy kate to the side and in back of me on the fiber-supply side. Make sure the yarn is coming off all of the bobbins in the same direction (that is, all clockwise or all counterclockwise). How much distance and how much tension I use depends on my singles and the yarn I want to make. I like an angled lazy kate because the 45-degree angle puts enough tension on my bobbins to keep them spinning freely but without backspin (and subsequent tangles). If my singles are particularly unevenly twisted, I move my kate farther away from me. This gives extra space for the twist to travel and even out in the singles before it gets plied.
Plying templates are an excellent tool to have on hand if you plan on working with more than three plies. I get fumble-fingered holding more than three singles. A plying template looks like a biggish button with four or more holes. You can find beautiful handmade ones, or a button with the right number of holes works fine. The plastic tops on shakable spice jars work wonderfully. You can find those with any number of holes ranging from 3 to as many as 12. You can also make your own custom template for a plying project with a piece of cardboard and a hole punch. If you are using a found or homemade plying template, make sure that the inside edges of the holes are smooth. You don’t want to fray your singles as it passes through on its way to be plied.
Twist and tension: The right tension is everything to plying. To get an evenly plied yarn, the tension of all the singles you are plying together should be the same, and the twist should enter all of the singles at the same time.
There is tension between the wheel and your hands, just as in drafting, but instead of working with a mass or strip of fiber, you are working with already-spun yarn — singles or to be combined. There is tension between your hands, between the wheel and the singles, between the singles themselves, and between the bobbins (or ball) holding the singles and your plying motion. It seems like a lot of things to think about, but it all works seamlessly, and when it doesn’t, it’s easy to check where in the plying tension something has gone wrong.
The little tension supplied by a lazy kate that holds bobbins at a 45-degree angle is almost always enough tension for me. As mentioned above, if my singles are particularly lively, I move the kate farther away, giving those happy singles more room to expel energy before getting plied. Still snarly? If neither of those options gives me enough tension, I add a tensioning band. Several angled lazy kates come with the option of adding a tensioning band.
When I first was learning to ply, it took several tries for me to get to the best plying motion. I used to use a hand-over-hand style of motion, but I found I wasn’t able to catch those little tiny pigtails in my singles, and it was hard to get an even ply. I switched to the hip-lock style of plying a couple of years ago, and it works great for me. I call it hip-lock because I lock my fiber-supply hand at my hip: it doesn’t move forward or back. I make sure that each of the singles I’m plying remains separated by keeping a finger of that hand between each one. This helps me control the tension and catch pigtails or other inconsistencies that may try to creep through. If I have more plies than fingers, I use a plying template. You can buy one or they are easy to make out of cardboard or the top of a spice jar. (See Three (or More) Is a Crowd.)
The hand I use for drafting when I spin is also my plying hand, the one that moves when I ply. It feeds plied yarn into the orifice at regular intervals. I regularly slide my plying hand back down the singles I’m plying. I do this lightly so I don’t disturb or fuzz up the fiber, but I do it to feel if there are any tiny pigtails or pieces of vegetable matter (VM) that I might want to remove. I let as much twist enter my yarn as I want, and then I pinch off the twist with my drafting hand and feed the yarn into the orifice.
I regularly check my ply twist by pulling a length off the bobbin and letting it hang in a loop. If I’m going for a balanced ply in my finished yarn (that is, a yarn that will hang in a mostly open loop after finishing), I don’t want my test sample to hang in an open loop. This is because twist escapes when the yarn is finished, so if your test yarn hangs in an open loop, it will likely seem underplied rather than plied to balance when it’s finished. As I check my ply, I’m looking for the balance I want in my yarn as well as consistency in the ply. (For how to finish yarn, see chapter 7.)
Just what is a balanced yarn? A balanced yarn is one that hangs in an open loop after finishing with no extra twist in either direction. This is the holy grail of yarns for some spinners, but others like their yarns a bit over- or undertwisted, depending on what they will use the yarn for.
I usually count treadles to get a feel for the rhythm when I’m just getting started plying, and then I stop counting. I make note of how many times I treadle between winding the last plied yarn onto the bobbin and winding on the next to get the ply I want, and I write this number down on a tag hanging on my wheel. If I get up from my wheel for any reason, when I come back, I count again to get myself started. My advice is to pick a way to count that works for you. I count with the downstroke of my right foot, but then I stop counting as my yarn winds on. If you’re using a double-treadle wheel, you may want to count with both of your feet — or not. Whatever option you choose in both of these instances, count the same way every time. (See also Counting Treadles.)
Both resting and rewinding singles helps with twist control. Resting lets the fresh twist settle a little, and rewinding helps even out the twist in a singles. I rarely rest my yarn on purpose. I’m usually so excited that I want to ply right away. What I probably wouldn’t do is ply a freshly spun bobbin to a well-rested (on the bobbin for more than a day or two) bobbin, because the twist will be different in each of the singles and then the twist will change again after it’s finished. So what you see when you ply may not be what you get in the finished yarn. If I had to ply a well-rested and a fresh single, I would do a sample all the way through to finishing the yarn to minimize surprises.
I rewind my bobbins a lot. I like using cardboard storage bobbins for big projects, because I can write on them and it keeps my spinning bobbins free. For me it makes plying easier because I can rewind the bobbins evenly, unlike when I’m spinning. (I’m not always great at moving hooks as often as I should when I spin, so I get a few hills and valleys on my bobbins.) Unevenly spun bobbins don’t spool as smoothly, and that can interfere with the tension when plying. Rewinding bobbins also helps even out the twist in a singles by moving the twist through the yarn.
To rewind bobbins you need storage bobbins and a bobbin winder. There are many kinds of both on the market — the choice is yours. Storage bobbins come in wood, plastic, and cardboard; many of them are made for weaving, but spinners borrow them. Bobbin winders can be manual or electric. Some spinners adapt an electric drill as a bobbin winder; some use a quill attachment for their electric spinner.
Rewinding bobbins does not add or subtract twist to your singles because the winding is done as a side-to-side feed. If, however, you wound a bobbin into a center-pull ball and pulled the yarn from the center and wound it onto a bobbin, you would add or subtract twist depending on how the singles was spun. Yes, this happens to any yarn you knit from the center of a center-pull ball, too.
A major question for knitters is, “How much ply twist do you need for knitting?” I use different amounts of ply twist for different yarns. I will admit that much of it has to do with how I like the look. Below are a few samples of top drafted woolen and also drafted worsted. For each, I spun a balanced-ply yarn, a slightly underplied yarn, and a slightly overplied yarn.
Woolen-Spun |
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Balance |
Twist per Inch (tpi) |
Comments |
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Balanced |
4 tpi/ |
The benchmark ply; best all-around ply for all knitting. |
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Undertwisted |
1.5 tpi/ |
This seems too soft for me. My needle tips slipped between the plies and once or twice split the singles. I don’t feel like this yarn would hold up well when knit. |
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Overtwisted |
6 tpi/ |
This has been my go-to yarn for a while. I love the spring that the extra twist gives the yarn. It also starts to get rounder with more ply twist and to cheat to some properties of a 3-ply. An overtwisted 2-ply yarn behaves a little like a 3-ply, it has a little more durability and a little more stitch definition — not as much as a 3-ply, but more than a 2-ply. |
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Worsted-Spun |
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Balance |
Twist per Inch |
Comments |
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Balanced |
4 tpi/ |
The benchmark ply; best all-around ply for all knitting. |
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Undertwisted |
1.5 tpi/ |
I love this one. It’s soft looking but still seems like it will hold together. It has wonderful drape. I would use this to knit lace or a loose-gauge garment. |
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Overtwisted |
6 tpi/ |
This starts to look and feel harder, a little stiff. It would be durable. I would use it for outerwear sweaters and mittens that would keep you warm and shed some moisture. |
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Singles do their own thing because they are full of twist energy. Knitted stitches look fluid — they have movement. Knitted singles block wonderfully, and stitches stay where you put them. Singles, especially short, soft wools, are prone to pilling (see Woolen Drafting).
Lace. Singles yarns are pliant and compliant. When blocked, singles yarn stays where you put it and gives a softer look to the lace.
Stockinette stitch. Often the swatch biases. Notice also its uneven surface and strong vertical line.
Cables or Texture. I find a singles cable limp and soft looking, not what I want in a cable.
Singles yarns maintain long color runs and can be used for most smaller-patterned stitches without much visual distortion.
A 2-ply yarn is oval in shape and tends to roll out. A knitters’ favorite, 2-ply yarn is easy to make and extremely versatile.
Stockinette stitch. I was surprised at how textured the surface of the 2-ply swatch above looks. The bias is gone, and the stitches have a lot of visual movement as they push apart from each other.
Lace. A 2-ply yarn is more oval than round. The visual motion in the stockinette sample works to great advantage in lace. The stitches roll away from each other, opening the lace holes. It makes a fantastic open-lace yarn.
Soft colorwork. With its oblong shape, 2-ply yarn creates soft lines between colors, making it a good fit for the flow of soft colorwork designs, such as Fair Isle and other stranded knitting (below).
Stranded knitting
Cables. The 2-ply cable is better than the singles cable. There are times I would like the extra visual motion the 2-ply gives the cable, but it is still a flattish cable with some, but not great, substance.
Hard-edged colorwork. The lines between colors are softer and visually blend, which means this yarn is not a good choice for hard-edged colorwork like intarsia (below).
Intarsia
When you spin a variegated yarn as it comes from the roving or top, it usually marls or barber poles, and if this marling has high contrast, it interrupts most patterns. You’ll see the color patterning of the yarn and have to hunt for the stitch patterns. This can work for simple texture patterns but doesn’t work well for lace and cables.
Double-tap the image to open to fill the screen. Use the two-finger pinch-out method to zoom in. (These features are available on most e-readers.)
A 3-ply yarn is round and rolls in when knit. Yarns with three or more plies are the least prone to pilling.
Stockinette stitch. The 3-ply swatch looks so smooth next to the 2-ply. The stitches line up and lean in, and the roundness of the yarn settles them.
Cables. Attention! This cable stands up. The rolling in that makes a 3-ply not the perfect lace yarn makes it a fab yarn for cables. The stitches press together and stand up. It’s the perfect yarn for a cable.
Hard-edged colorwork. A 3-ply yarn creates a crisp edge that makes the shapes in intarsia stand out (below).
Intarsia
Lace. A 3-ply yarn is round and rolls into the stitch; it wants those yarnovers to close. It’s much more interested in making the decreases pop. Even a firm blocking yielded a not-so-very-lacy lace.
Soft colorwork. The roundness of the 3-ply yarn keeps colors from blending visually (below).
Stranded knitting
Double-tap the image to open to fill the screen. Use the two-finger pinch-out method to zoom in. (These features are available on most e-readers.)
The 3-ply yarn moves color dots from spots to speckles, smaller and able to more easily blend visually. A 3-ply works better for many pattern stitches. Keep pattern stitches small, and swatch before starting a project, though I like a variegated 3-ply for cables.
When it’s knitted, chain ply behaves like a 3-ply. All of the knitting factors are the same with one difference: done with a variegated fiber, the colors blend smoothly from one to another more like a singles yarn, keeping the colors intact rather than blending them. When you knit with a variegated chain-ply yarn, structurally it will behave like a 3-ply, but the color play will be like a singles, where there is the possibility of pooling: make sure to swatch.
There are as many ways to chain ply as there are spinners. But the basics are the same: pull a loop of yarn through another loop of yarn, like making a crochet chain. Here’s how to chain ply:
It sounds like a lot to think about, but it happens almost simultaneously once you get used to it. It helps at first to practice with a commercial yarn; a sock yarn is great. Remember to slow down. Chain plying doesn’t go as fast as plying a 3-ply yarn; manipulating the yarn into the chain takes extra time. As you get comfortable with chain plying, practice working with different-size loops. This will help when you’re working with a variegated single, using bigger loops within a single color length and smaller loops when colors change to help keep the colors as clear as possible.
First, let me say that for this technique you don’t have to use spit — water works just fine. Spit splicing is a nearly seamless way to attach two pieces of wool yarn. It can be used to fix broken singles when plying, and it can also be used in knitting when starting a new yarn, therefore avoiding having ends to weave in.
What you do is basically felt the two ends of yarn together. Taking the two singles you want to splice together, fluff open the ends and wet them. How much and how wet? I wet about an inch’s worth of yarn, making it a little more than damp but not dripping wet. Stack the ends on each other so that the tip of one damp end overlaps the dry part of the other yarn by 1⁄4 inch to 1⁄2 inch. Now, place the stacked yarns between your palms and rub your hands back and forth to create heat and friction. I do this for 20 seconds before checking the splice. The splice should be felted enough to just hold and not be hard felted. The length of time it takes to splice this way will depend on the fiber and fiber blends you use. Some portion of your blend must be regular wool; superwash won’t work.
It is as inevitable as rain at a summer family reunion that you will make mistakes when you ply. Most mistakes are easy to fix! Plied yarn can be unplied and re-plied until you like the yarn you have. If your yarn feels too stiff, run it back through your wheel, unplying it slightly. If your yarn feels too floppy, run it back through your wheel, adding twist. Here are some other common problems and what to do when they happen.
One of your singles breaks while plying. Stop and unply your yarn until you get to the broken singles. Splice the broken ends of the single together (I spit splice [see below] just to be sure), and then resume plying.
You’ve twisted the ply in the wrong direction. I’ve done this so many times, even taken the yarn through finishing. I just thought my yarn looked weird and would be fine after it dried. It wasn’t.
If you make a center-pull ball with a nostepinder, you can ply from both ends of the ball.
One of your bobbins runs out and the other still has yarn. Break the singles that is still attached to the bobbin with yarn. Ply from both ends of the yarn that’s left in one of a couple of ways. In both cases, you will have to splice the ends of the newly rewound singles to the ends of the singles waiting on your wheel.
