As The Yarn Turns

Plying Easter Egg Yarn - Continued

Have you ever wondered when a spindle is too full? When it looks like the one below.

Actually it worked very well until I got near the end and I started having trouble with it. I was stubborn though and really wanted to finish the rest of it without stopping. It took some coaxing but I was able to get the rest of it on there. Once I got it all plied, I wrapped it on a niddy noddy so I could skein it and set the twist. You can get some really nice wooden niddy noddies. This particular niddy was a PVC niddy noddy. They are great if you are short on money, you want something more durable than a wooden one, or you want something that can get wet. The nice thing about this one is that I can twist it so it lays flat or take it apart for storage.

I found the instructions on the Internet somewhere but they are easy enough to make. I took one five foot length of 1/2 inch diameter PVC pipe and cut it into one 18 inch piece and four 6 inch pieces. Then I took two PVC T connectors (also 1/2 inch diameter) and placed one each end of the long piece. The short pieces go in the sides of the T connectors to make a kind of capital "I". When you use it you twist one end so it's rotated 90 degrees from the other end.

After you have wrapped the yarn around it, it looks something like the picture below. That's Katie Cat checking out the niddy noddy in the upper right corner of the picture. I found some good instructions for wrapping yarn on a niddy noddy in Hands on Spinning by Lee Raven. The book is small and reasonably priced but has a lot of information in it for its size. There are also some good online instructions for Using a Niddy Noddy.

Now all that is left to do is to set the twist.

by Sydney  |

Plying Easter Egg Singles

The Blue-Faced Leicester (BFL) fiber dyed with Easter Egg colors has all been spun so today I started the process of plying. I already had some natural white BFL singles so I decided to ply with that. I like the contrast of the deep Easter Egg colors with the white. It keeps it bright. Up until now I've either plied two non-tensioned singles from two fat dowels, two empty toilet paper rolls, or two center pull balls (Hey it works) or I have plied a single back onto itself using the Andean Plying Bracelet technique. Before I tried Andean Plying, I would have thought that plying from two singles would work better. I was wrong though. With two singles, inevitably one or both of them twist back on them, so I have to start and stop a lot. Andean Plying goes much more smoothly, at least for me. Give it a try if you haven't already. There are step-by-step instructions with pictures here. This time though, I decided to use a technique I saw in a recent "Spin-Off" where you wind both singles in a ball and then ply from the ball. That way you at least only have one ball rolling around. I started winding my ball today but ran out of white singles. I'll need to do a little more spinning before I can start plying the two together.

The Blog That Almost Wasn't

I almost wasn't able to update my blog tonight. Earlier tonight I went to update it and couldn't even open the Blog editor. First I installed over my current version. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled. That worked but it had been way too long since I set this up initially. I was starting to think I'd never get it back the way it was. The hazards of beta software. But I think it's back to its old self now, hopefully.

Arbor Day

A while back, okay a couple of years ago, I planted a variety of tiny trees in the back of yard. The plan was to replant them last year after they had grown a bit. Well we never got around to it last year and they are starting to get large. Since we just had Arbor Day and it was a cool, cloudy, damp day, we replanted one of the crabapple trees. Now it has a new home where it can stretch out its roots. Now if I can just take care of the rest of them.

by Sydney  |