How will you spin your singles?
There are two ways you can go, and only you know which one will work best with how you learn and study.
1) Spin all of your singles at once to the same size, then divide onto storage bobbins and ply. Pro: All singles are the same, size and twist. Con: Yarns and swatchesare different sizes. This is disconcerting to some spinners. I have seen eye twitching when these spinners examine my samples.
2) Spin singles to match finished size of yarn – a 2-ply to end as a DK, a 3-ply to end as a DK. Pro: Finished yarns and swatches same size. Con: Singles are different are different sizes and may have different twists. This makes some other spinners twitchy.
I do singles all at once and then divide onto storage bobbins. Because, I won’t lie to you, I’m lazy. But I also want my yarns to be the most the same at their core, same fiber, same draft, and same singles. The differing size of finished yarns and swatches doesn’t bother me.
I know that to spin finer singles to make my 3-ply yarn match the size of my 2-ply yarn, would mean more twist in my singles, and for me that changes an extra element in my experiment.
Please don’t ask me to tell you what size your singles need to be to get a yarn a particular finished size. That’s a whole different experiment, because it depends on all of the usual spinning suspects used to build a yarn. For example, think of two different drafting styles – airy woolen singles will need to be a different size than dense worsted singles to make a DK yarn.
This is why there’s never a chart that says to get a 2-ply yarn that is 14 WPI, your singles need to be X WPI, because it depends on all the things. This is something I want to dig into later, it's facinating. I don't get out much.
So now choose your path and spin your singles for your 2-ply and 3-ply yarns.
Next time, I’ll give you some tips on plying consistently.
I have started a spinning Patreon! I’m keeping it pretty simple with three levels, that include more information on our Sample Alongs, peeks behind the scenes on my ongoing work, current fiber obsessions, and monthly, live Zoom get togethers.
Many spinners have asked for more and ongoing spinning information after they take a class or read one of my articles or posts, and I think Patreon is a great way to get you the information you want.
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