A Tale Of Two Twists
Next up in the endless stream of recently spun yarns is a three-ply I spun from some basic wool roving I bought from Amy. I dyed it myself last year and immediately predrafted it. But then I tucked it away and basically forgot about it until last week.
Unfortunately, I knew as I was spinning that I was putting too much twist in the singles. I suspected that the finished yarn would feel more like rope than yarn.
But, after reading Abby‘s fascinating article in the latest issue of Spin Off, I decided to continue with the tight spinning twist and fool around a little when I Navajo plied the singles.
I purposely underplied the first half of the bobbin. For the second half, I put in just enough twist so the plying twist perfectly matched the spinning twist. Here’s what I got (click for big; the underplied yarn is on the right):
Same singles, different plying technique, much different grist and appearance. Interesting, huh.
I took photos of the finished hanks before I set the twist. The underplied hank, obviously, does not hang straight because it’s not balanced.
The other, fresh off the niddy noddy, is nicely balanced:
After I set the twist, the underplied hank now hangs straight even though, of course, it’s not really “balanced.”
As I suspected, the underplied skein is considerably softer and loftier than the other skein. Although, the yarn is “sloppy” looking and seems a bit unstable. Clearly, Navajo plying is not a good method for fooling around with plying twist since each little section is a veritable island of twist unto itself.
But I’m not going to give up on this yarn. I might use the loftier yarn for socks and knit the heels and toes from the tightly twisted yarn.
I recently had a lengthy debate with Michaele over whether you can really “balance” a skein by setting the twist. It was my position that, no matter how straight the finished hank hangs, yarn is never balanced in the true sense of the word unless the spinning twist perfectly matches the plying twist. So, for example, a single ply yarn can never be balanced even though the hank may hang perfectly straight after the twist is set. Anyone care to join the debate??
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20 comments Susan | spinning
20 Responses to “A Tale Of Two Twists”
Not me, just wanted to say I love the color!
I can’t remember now where we disagreed on this, but what you say about twist souds reasonable to me. I think the issue was more about whether you can ever balance singles, since you don’t ply them.
Beautiful yarn, by the way – and useful to see how underplying affects the yarn.
Sometimes heat-setting can set the twist on an unbalanced yarn. A couple of methods: (1) Hang the wetted skein and weight it, then steam it up and down with a steam iron. Or (2) wet it in very hot water — use rubber gloves to handle it — it shouldn’t felt if you don’t agitate it; then hang and weight it. Method #2 works better with large skeins, because the steam doesn’t penetrate very far into a thick skein. (Experiment with a little bit of yarn first so you don’t accidentally screw up a whole skein of yarn! Ask me how I know that.)
Neither of these methods is infallible, though, so I try to spin and ply a balanced yarn so I don’t have to twiddle with it later.
If you like the softer effect you got with the underplied yarn, then just spin the singles with less twist so takes less twist in plying to get a balanced yarn.
But why does a yarn need to be perfectly balanced. It should be spun and plied for a purpose and if the purpose is socks then over-twisting might be ok, even good. I’m of the opinion it doesn’t matter ALL that much if the yarn looks good and works for the intended purpose. Whatever works!
Beautiful yarn! I think setting the twist can help balance out the yarn – something in the washing and whacking and drying helps even it out, but I do agree with you that matching the ply twist to the singles twist is what makes a skein balanced. It also makes it less sproingy, IMO. And I like the sproing!
)
I’m stayin’ out of this one.
You’re not getting enough debate on Ravelry? You want to start more?
LOL @ Cheryl’s comment and dittoing Margene’s.
I’m really in a teal/turquoise/aqua phase right now so I’m loving the color of your yarn, regardless of its balance issues.
As a beginning spinner, I’ve been having such a hard time finding information about how to make a balanced yarn!
I agree with you. Unless the twist in the spinning is matched against the twist in the plying, anything you do to the skein (unless we’re talking ack-rylic that is killed with an iron) has that pent up energy regardless of how it looks hanging. Put weight on a skein to dry and yes, kinky stuff straightens out, but heck, just like my wavy hair, it can curl right up again when dampened. That energy is awakened anew.
I seem to remember Michaele’s argument being that if you heat set the yarn immediately upon removing it from the bobbin, you can balance the single permanantly – so that it will never revert back to its unbalanced state. Whch makes no sense to me at all, although I haven’t conducted any experiments with it on my own yet.
As long as a fiber has memory, it can revert back. Sort of like blocking, every time it gets wet, it needs to be done again. This is fine as long as you enjoy leaving it in the skein. When knitted, after washing, or even after wearing and pulling at it, the fabric will begin to skew from the energized (unbalanced) yarn. Something to play with but not a great look as your button band begins to travel diagonally across the front of your sweater.
Beautiful yarn Susan. Wow. I agree that the color is totally lovely. Also, that a yarn is only truly balance through spinning, not by any wet or heat setting that I know of, but I am not an expert. I also think Margene is right. The beauty of spinning your own yarn is that you can spin it however you want and for whatever use you desire. Isn’t it wonderful?
I am glad Judy spoke up, as I was thinking about this problem as I scrolled down, but couldn’t quite phrase it and am glad she did… I think I am a long ways from being able to create a perfectly balanced yarn consistently, so will be choosing carefully what I use my early handspuns to make, for just this reason. I do love the color of this yarn!
You’re correct.
I stand by my assertion that “balanced single” is a term that cannot have any meaning. It’s the same way that one person can’t sit on one END of a seesaw and “balance” it. Someone else has to be on the other end. For a yarn to balance, you need to have at least two plies where, as you say, the plying twist balances the spinning twist.
Setting the twist makes yarn LOOK balanced, but, as other commenters have said, any excess twist is still there. Case in point: last year I pulled out some singles I spun maybe 10-15 YEARS ago for a weaving project that never got off the ground. These skeins had the twist set, and had been sitting quietly in my stash all that time. I wanted to dye the yarn and knit with it. I dyed the singles.
Sproing! All that twist energy that had been resting there all those years bounced back when the yarn got wet. It wasn’t a problem for me because I could straighten it out, but you’d've never thought that much energy could be in that yarn after all that time.
Just sayin’.
Heck, I have no idea, being new to this and all… but it is pretty interesting! I am fascinated by ‘energized’ yarns, and wonder what kinds of projects are best for them… biased shawls? something else??
Absolutely *love* the color – yum!
Well, I haven’t all that much to add to this conversation, but I have always thought that people who think they can balance a skein by setting the twist with heat or weights or whatever, are just man-handling their yarn into some sort of submission. But once an unbalanced yarn, always an unbalanced yarn I think. Of course the goal in plying it so get that perfect single twist to plied twist ratio and I don’t know that I’ll ever get there, my singles by themselves aren’t consistent enough. If I could get that, I’m thinking the plying would be the easy part.
Do you think our great grandmothers and whatever other relatives we had that had to spin for life had these discussions on twist and plying and all that? I wonder how perfect their yarns were just by feel and how they were perfectly suitable for their need.
These yarns look to be the same color as the wonderful roving you gave me last year at Snake River. Speaking of which…are you coming this year?
Great post about the twist. I’ve yet to know my spinning well enough to make such judgments about balance. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get there.
I have to say I agree with those who do not believe in using different methods to balance a skein of yarn. If it is not balanced when it comes off of the bobbin….it is not balanced period and will revert back to it’s natural state once it is wet…….and knitted, Judy is right, it is energized and will move with time.