Plying Day

I have not been doing a lot of spinning lately, at least at the wheel. I have been playing with my spindle and knitting, though, so I’ve not been totally idle.

But I finally finished spinning the singles from Emily, a Leicester ewe whose fleece I purchased in 2017, and washed that summer. I had drum-carded the fleece after not doing a great job of picking it.

After dizzying the fiber from the carded batts, I spun “singles” (often mistakenly called “single-ply”) mostly using a modified backward long draw. I clearly needed the practice. Let’s just call the yarn “rustic”.

I have five skeins of about 150 yards each, for about 750 yards total. And I only had a golf-ball-sized ball of leftovers, which I chain-plied.

I wound the 3-ply yarn into 2-yard skeins on my PVC tubing winder and tied the skeins in four places to minimize tangles.

Washing “to set the twist” is done in very hot water. Two washes also cleaned out the remaining “grease” in the wool. A couple of rinses and it was out to the line.

After drying the yarn is rewound, and the length is marked on the “work-in-progress” tag.

Skeins are twisted into bundles and put aside, hopefully to be sold.