You may have noticed that my tone was not all that hopeful for a successful campaign! I have had major bad luck with doing this successfully in the past, and whole chunk of singles normally ended up in the trash. I had mentioned my dilemma of a:) knitting with singles I knew would bias, or b:) plying from a center pull ball to RoLynn on Tuesday night (we go to a stitch and b*tch at Barnes and Nobel on Tuesday night) and she had a lot of suggestions. One of which was to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n my treadling which was in fact what I did, but gosh it was hard to do! And besides that, I only have so much time to do this!!
See, I noticed that what happens is that I have a twist going in front of me making the yarn going into the oriface and a twist going on behind my fingers coming from the ball itself. That is my major problem, controlling the ball twist too:
Now, Caryn took four pictures and this is the only one that you can see what I mean, although this shot only has one twist behind. We need to practice our close up shots, I think! Anyhoo, this is my major complaint in plying this way, and if there are any suggestions about how to control that second ball twist, I may find I can do this a little better next time! I think I was the victorious one, though as I did go s-l-o-w and ended up with this:
I have a few spots that aren't that great, but hey, when the war was over I guess I didn't need that beer after all. Here it is in the skein form, with a total of 142 yards of approximate dk/light worsted weight:
It's drying now from a soak in soapy water and maybe next week I can show you the start on the knucks!
4 comments:
Oh my gosh!! You don't need any help woman, you have this down pat!
I love the finished product, great job.
Bring it Tuesday!!
Going slow sucks!!!! That is gorgeous yarn. I've only plyed off of bobbins on lazy kates, I bet the ball thingy would be a trick. I'm really not sure beer would have helped the matter any, except celebrate afterward. :)
Plying tips:
I stick my thumb in the middle of the ball, and use my fingers and thumb (of the same hand) to release yarn from the ball and pull way back. The thumb stays up towards the ceiling. The other hand works to regulate the twist, far in front of the hand with the ball, regulating hand is usually held wrist up. The best plying technique from what I understand is when you bring your hand with the ball on it very far back from the wheel's orifice--roughly 2-2.5 feet from the wheel. This keeps the twist even since it's over a long distance. I hope this helps--I do almost all my plying this way, fingering weight to bulky!
You've got a lovely skein there despite the plying wars. I usually let the singles rest for at least a week before winding into a ball. That helps a bit. I don't think there's much you can do about the twist coming off the ball, other than to let it go from time to time.
Post a Comment