How many times can you spin one skein of yarn?
Cable plying is when you ply two 2-ply yarns together, for a total of four plies. I did not start this project with the intention of cable plying, but sometimes, you have to go with what the fiber wants to do. I’ve only made cabled yarn once before, a few years ago. The hat I knitted with it came out huge because the yarn was super stretchy, so I haven’t attempted it since. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This spinning project started out as a smooth-drafting antidote to my frustrating and mostly unsuccessful attempt to learn longdraw and drafting from the fold at the same time. My fiber started out as two braids of lovely color coordinated hand-dyed New Zealand Merino wool and silk blend from Allons-y! Fiber Arts, and I set it up on my most consistent spinning wheel, a cherry Schacht Matchless. I planned to get a ton of simple two ply yarn from this 10+ ounces of beautiful fiber. What could possibly go wrong?
Spin #1: I decided to spin this full thickness, drafting across the end of the combed top, which I discovered that I don’t enjoy that much. Turns out that I much prefer splitting the fiber into narrower strips; somehow it feels like I am making more progress when I can see the colors changing. Almost a year after I started (life happens), I finally finished spinning the singles and got started on plying.
Spin #2: I decided to ply on the Athena Capricorn spinning wheel, because I had a big jumbo bobbin for it, but in retrospect that might not have been the best idea. She’s a fun little wheel but in my zealous desire to get this plied, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the twist. Had I plied on the Matchless the settings would have remained the same at the very least, but I just didn’t think to bump up the ratio on the Athena to add extra twist. The result was a whole lot (over 900 yards!) of super loose 2-ply. On the plus side, I played Bobbin Chicken and won, with only two yards of one single left over. So there’s that.
Finish #1: I washed and finished all that 2-ply anyway, in hopes that it would somehow magically become yarn on the process. It did fluff up nicely after washing, but still turned out to be hopelessly underplied – to the point where I was not sure it would even hold together in some spots. I’m wondering if maybe my singles lost a lot of their twist after sitting on the bobbins for months. Ugh.
As I was pondering running everything back through the wheel to add more twist, I saw a Reddit post about cable plying and thought, as long as I’m adding more twist, why don’t I add a little extra twist and then cable ply it? Maybe it’s time to give it another try.
Spin #3: So I placed that giant 900+ yard hank of underplied 2-ply on my creaky old umbrella swift, set up the Matchless, lined up a few albums to listen to, and got to work. It took about four hours but I added a good bit of twist to the yarn. I divided the fiber in half to split into two two regular-sized Schacht bobbins by periodically taking it off the swift and weighing it (that was a pain in the ass), and then switched bobbins when I got to about half the original weight. Unfortunately the second half didn’t quite fit on a single bobbin, so I found a third bobbin and kept on going. So much for my weighing idea.
Spin #4: And then, the next day, I cable plied. This involves plying the two 2-plies together, back in the direction in which the singles were originally spun — the opposite direction of the initial ply. It took much less time – a little over an hour – because I wasn’t adding much twist, and of course the yardage was about half. It did all fit neatly on two bobbins. There’s a knot towards the end of one where I had to add in that third partial bobbin of 2-ply, but otherwise I only had about a yard left over.
Spin #5: Unfortunately, after all that work, it was underplied again. All the information I could find said that when cable plying, you should use the biggest whorl you have, and only give it a little bit of twist; just enough to hold it together. But kids, don’t believe everything you read on the internets. When I skeined the first bobbin it was clearly suuuper loosey-goosey. I could literally see daylight between the two 2-plies in some places; it measured maybe 1.5 twists per inch. I considered letting it go — knitting this yarn might be like holding two strands together — but then knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with that. So, I left the second half on its bobbin, got out the umbrella swift again, and ran them both through the spinning wheel again to add more twist.
Finish #2: Just for consistency, I washed and finished the yarn once more to even out the twist.
So. After running all 10.4 ounces (just under 300 grams) of this fiber through the wheel five times and washing/finishing twice, it came out nicely, although it is not at all what I envisioned. That’s part of the adventure of handspinning though – sometimes you have to let go of your original expectations, and/or let it be a learning experience. The colors are all still pretty together, but I am not 100% crazy about the choppy color distribution with the four plies.
Ironically, the resulting yarn is just a smidge on the extra twisty side, but after all that underplying I can live with it. I only ended up with a total of about 430 yards of worsted-weight cable ply, which doesn’t seem like a lot of yarn for all that work, but at least it is now very consistently spun. Exactly one year to the day from when I started this project, I’ll take that as a win. I’ll just have to remember to knit something with it (not a hat!) that is intended to be stretchy.
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