#im so obvious- its purple

[milkweedman]

learning to spin on a drop spindle: a beginner’s lengthy yet comprehensive guide

I put this monograph together for a friend, but many other people wanted to read it as well, so here it is !

Fig A: Parts of a Drop Spindle. (image source. notes are mine. Click for higher res !). Apologies in advance for the lack of image descriptions--for the most part I use images because I can’t figure out how to describe the thing in words, so describing the images is kinda the whole issue. If anyone wanted to write them for me I’d add them to the original post in a heartbeat !

How to Get Started Drafting and Spinning

So, you have your fiber and your spindle--now what ?

Friendly pre-tutorial reminder that radfems can fuck right off if they think I’m writing any of this for their benefit. I’m not. I hope they all choke on their spindles <3. This is a safe space for trans people first and foremost.

(Check out this post that goes into picking a spindle and your first fiber, if you don’t have one yet)

First, you might wish to practice drafting a little. Drafting is the process of drawing the fibers out from, for example, a strand of roving or a rolag, into a thinner, airy length. To draft, loosely hold your fiber in your dominant hand, and pinch the very tip of the fiber with your thumb and forefinger of your non dominant hand. Then gently pull. If you pull all the way, you should notice that your fiber detaches from the fiber source eventually. For yarn, we want very very long lengths, so we don’t want that to happen. To get a continuous length of drafted fiber, simply change where you’re pulling from as you go. For example, you can draft out 2 centimeters/1 inch of fiber, and then move your fingers 2 cm/1 in back toward your fiber supply, and draft again.

The thinner you draft (or pre-draft*), the thinner that fiber will spin up. Once we start spinning, you’ll see how adding twist immediately compacts the fiber quite a bit, so you need to draft much thicker than you actually want your yarn to be. When pre-drafting specifically, if in doubt--draft thicker. You can always draft it out a little more as you’re spinning.

Figuring out how to draft smoothly can be one of the harder parts of learning to spin, but even before knowing how to do it perfectly you can still create good yarn.

Check out The Joy of Handspinning website to see drafting in action, as well as several different types of drafting.

Also check out this video explaining pre-drafting roving. 1:00-2:30 is especially helpful. If it’s not clicking from this video, search youtube for “pre drafting fiber for spinning” and watch til you have a better understanding.

*pre-drafting just means drafting before spinning--so it’s the same type of thing as drafting while spinning, but without having to wrangle your spindle at the same time. I’d recommend pre-drafting at least a bit of your fiber until you feel comfortable doing it. Then you can spin with your pre-drafted fiber, and it’ll be easier than if you hadn’t pre-drafted.

Tips: If you have a bottom whorl spindle, you may also want to practice spinning the spindle before it has any fiber on it, just to get a feel for how it moves. You could do this with the bottom point in a bowl or on a flat surface like a book or table. Try rolling the top of the shaft between your thumb and index finger. Don’t worry about it toppling over frequently--your spindle will be suspended by the yarn that you’re spinning, so it won’t topple !

If you have a top whorl spindle, you might have a harder time getting it to spin without being suspended, because the center of gravity is so high. Instead, try tying a piece of thread or scrap yarn to the hook (if it has one) or below the whorl (look for figure B below) and secure it with a half hitch knot. Then try spinning it like that, and let it hang freely to unwind itself whenever it has too much twist before you try again.

You can also try spinning a bottom whorl suspended by scrap yarn or thread. The advantage of trying it while it’s suspended is it can allow you to watch twist being added and see what it does without messing with your handspun, as well as letting you get a feel for how it moves while suspended. If you have a bottom whorl, I’d give both a try !

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Now that you can draft, you’re gonna want to attach your fiber to your spindle. Some people use a leader to do this--it’s a pre-spun loop of yarn that you tie to your spindle. Then you loop some pre-drafted fiber through the loop of the leader, add twist til it holds, and off you go.

Another way to do it is without a leader. I’m much more familiar with this method, and I find it way easier, so I’ll go into more depth on this one:

1. Take the end of your pre-drafted fiber (you will need enough pre-drafted fiber to go from the underside of the whorl to the very top of the spindle, and then back again. If you’ve pre-drafted way more, don’t worry. We’re just working with this short amount for now, but it can stay attached). Make a slip knot at the end. You can roll the fiber between your fingers to add some twist if you’re having trouble making a slip knot with it. (Tip: if you’re having trouble getting the fibers to roll, wet them slightly with water or spit and it will be much easier)

2. Put the slip knot on the bottom point of your spindle, and slide it up so that it’s at the whorl.

3. Gently wind the pre-drafted fiber up the spindle shaft, until you are at the hook or top. Wind it over the hook (or do a half-hitch knot at the top--if there’s a groove near the top your half hitch should sit in there, otherwise it should sit as close to the top as possible while still being secure. You may drop it a few times while learning where the perfect spot is--such is life). Be careful with pre-drafted fiber--depending on staple length and fiber type, it can pull apart quite easily. The trick to keeping that from happening is to keep it a little slack and loose until you have added twist to it.

4. Pinch your pre-drafted fiber between your thumb and forefinger on your dominant hand, about 1 hand’s width from the top of your spindle. Turn the spindle in the direction you intend to spin your yarn (usually this will be clockwise, or to the right). Spin the spindle until you have the desired amount of twist. You should notice that all the fiber above the hook/half-hitch has twist, while the fiber below it has none. You need all of it to have twist, so let’s even it out--pop the half-hitch off with your thumb/unwind the yarn from the hook, unwind the yarn from the shaft so that the entire length you’ve worked with so far is stretched out. This will allow the twist to equalize. Now wind it all back up and put the half-hitch back/wind around the hook again. You may need to repeat this a couple times to get your starting fiber fully twisted (don’t worry though--you only need to do this at the very start. From here on you shouldn’t need to equalize twist like that until the next time you start from an empty spindle).

You’re done attaching the fiber--now you can spin !

Fig B: How your yarn should sit on a spindle, both top and bottom whorl

If that doesn’t make sense, here’s a video showing how to attach it with and without a leader. If that doesn’t help either, search youtube for “how to attach leader to drop spindle” and keep looking until you have a better understanding.

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So you know how to draft and your fiber is attached to your spindle--now it’s time to spin ! There are 3 different parts to spinning a singles on a drop spindle.

1. Adding twist. This can be done with just your hands, but the spindle makes it a whole lot faster. This is the purpose of a spindle--to add twist very quickly (and as a bonus, it’s a handy place to store the yarn as you spin it !). All you have to do is spin the spindle, and the only trick is to make sure you always spin in a consistent direction--don’t start a project spinning clockwise and end it spinning counterclockwise ! You’ll have an impossible time plying it then. There are a lot of different ways to spin a spindle--you’ll see a few watching the videos here, and more if you search out videos of drop spindling yourself. Whatever method is comfortable and practical for you is what you should do.

2. Drafting the fiber. You already know how to do this part !

3. Winding the yarn on. When your yarn is long enough that adding more length will make it hard to work with, you’ll want to wind it onto the spindle so that you can get back to spinning. To do this, pop the half hitch knot off the top/unwind from the hook, unwind along the shaft, and wind it near or at the base of the whorl, in the orientation seen in the very first picture. Always wind in the same direction that you’re spinning, to stop your yarn from flying off.

I would highly recommend starting with the method known as “park and draft” while you learn. In this method, you first add a ton of extra twist (usually as much as you can) and then put the spindle down and draft until that extra twist is used up. Then you wind on, and repeat. This isolates the actions of spinning so that you are only doing one at a time, which makes it a lot easier. Most people move on from this technique once they’ve figured it out, but you don’t have to--the drawback is that it’s typically slower, but hey, spinning is a slow craft anyway. There is no wrong way to spin, and everyone’s hands and bodies have different needs and work in different ways.

How to Park And Draft

First, use your dominant hand to pinch your pre-drafted fiber a few inches/6 cm above the top of the spindle.

Now just spin the spindle clockwise, until it won’t really spin any more. (Don’t try to get ~the most twist ever achieved~ or anything like that--your yarn can potentially snap from too much twist. Take your cue from the spindle--when it stops wanting to spin, you’ve got enough twist.) Don’t let the twist advance beyond where you’re pinching it off.

This is important--if the twist gets into your fiber, it becomes much harder to draft it. But don’t worry, you can undo this by pinching just above where the twist has entered your fiber, and with the other hand just below (pinching the actual yarn here). Now (with the hand that’s pinching the yarn) roll in the opposite direction that you’re spinning in. This will move the twist down into the rest of your yarn. Let go of where you’re pinching the fiber, slide your yarn-pinching hand to where it usually is as you’re spinning, and get back to it.

Your leader/yarn should be very kinked up and wiry. Now put the spindle between your thighs (or between your knees, under one knee, or under something heavy that won’t damage your spindle. Thighs are convenient, but if it’s uncomfortable, try putting the spindle somewhere else. It needs to be held firmly in place and not move around). This is the “park” part of “park and draft”.

Now, you want to be pinching the twist off at the same spot, but using your other hand instead. I usually pinch right above where I’m already pinching and let go with the lower hand.

First we’re going to just bring the twist up the pre-drafted fiber by sliding your pinching hand up the fiber, slowly and gently. You should see the twist follow behind your hand as it enters the fiber. If you have lots of pre-drafted fiber, you might wind on, add more twist, wind on again, etc. You could also draft out your pre-drafted fiber (this is what the majority of more experienced spinners who pre-draft do) while you go.

The “draft” part of “park and draft” is just like pre-drafting, but one end is attached to a spindle. This gives you something to lightly pull against, if you want. Draft slowly and with purpose.

At a certain point, you will run out of excess twist. At this point, wind on. If you’ve only done a short length, you can also add more twist, park it again, and go back to drafting.

If you’ve run out of armspan but still have lots of excess twist, unpark your spindle (let it hang free) and allow it to untwist a little, monitoring it closely. If this happens often, try to put less energy into twisting your spindle, or allow it to twist for less time.

The amount of twist that your yarn has matters a lot--it will impact your finished yarn hugely. A yarn without enough twist will be very limp and might even fall apart as you handle it. A yarn with too much twist will be wiry and inelastic. You want to find a middle ground where it’s got just the right amount for what you intend to use it for--a hard, inelastic wool yarn can make a good bag, but not a very good hat.

To see how much twist you’ve added to your singles as you spin, try a plyback test ! This is really quick to do on spindles--just relax the distance between your fiber supply and the top of the spindle. When the yarn is no longer taut, the live twist will cause it to twist back on itself. With too little twist, you may just get a few sad loops (or no loops, if it’s super undertwisted). With too much twist, you may get tons of tight little curls of yarn. With a good amount of twist, you should have a few good curls (just one if it’s a short length of yarn, or several if it’s your armspan) that aren’t too tight. Those curls are what your yarn will look like once 2 plied, so it’s a great litmus test for whether you’re adding the correct amount of twist or not.

Fig C: What different amounts of twist looks like in your singles.

To fix too little twist, just spin the spindle a little extra until it looks right. To fix too much twist, either draft more fiber or else let the spindle untwist a little.

You can and should do this before winding each new length on, at least while you’re still learning the motions.

Check out this video of how to spin with the park and draft method ! 0:00-4:45 is intro and attaching the leader. 4:46-9:00 is the method itself (note to friend: don’t watch past 9 mins). If this video doesn’t work for you, search “drop spindle park and draft” on youtube.

A few interim tips

1. It’s critical to hold your fiber supply loosely. If you find that you have put a lot of force into drafting, then you are either holding your fiber way too tight or your hands are too close together (or potentially both). Drafting should not require force. If it is requiring force, adjust your grip and your hand placement continually until it gets better, and refine from there.

2. Try to put some tension on the yarn as you wind it on. This will make it sit a little neater and flatter, so that you have a more stable cone of yarn and can fit more on it.

3. If you draft out your fiber so much that it runs thin and just sort of disintegrates, just pull off the most wispy parts from your yarn and the fiber supply, then hold the two together again, making sure to overlap by several inches/6-10cm. Gently draft out a little and add twist before putting that join under the weight of your spindle, or it will fail again. You can join from one fiber source to the next one (necessary with rolags, hand combed top, and strips off of batts) in a similar way; make sure to leave a little unspun fiber for a good join, and overlap the end of the first fiber source with the beginning of the second by about an inch/2.5 cm.

4. If your yarn snaps (rather than your fiber running thin as you draft), it’s because it was A) twisted way too much B) spun too fine for the drop spindle you’re using C) both A and B or D) your spindle has become heavy enough that it can no longer spin as fine as you were spinning.

For A, B, and C: remove as much twist as you can from either end of the snapped yarn, then put both ends in your upturned palm, overlapping them over the whole width of your palm. Add enough either water or spit to get them good and wet (not dripping, but they do need to be wet). Now place your other palm down on top, and rub vigorously for about 30 seconds until the ends have joined together. If necessary, you can also just tie the ends in a knot, although it’s not invisible and you can usually feel it in the finished yarn.

For D: is your whorl removable ? If so, remove the whorl and continue spinning. If not (and for the vast majority of beginner’s drop spindles it won’t be), your spindle is full ! Even if there’s still room, it’s too heavy to continue spinning on for that project. You could keep going spinning a thicker yarn, but that means your yarn will randomly get thicker somewhere near the end, which works for very few projects. If this happens to you when there’s still tons and tons of room on your spindle, that means in general you ought to spin thicker yarn on that particular spindle if you want to fill it up all the way.

Okay, I spun yarn, now what ?

So at the moment, you have what we call a singles (some people just say “single”). That can be used as is, or it can be plied--that is, held together with more strands of singles and twisted in the opposite direction. But either way, you need to get it off your spindle !

If you’re going to leave it as a singles, then you’ll be winding it into a skein (we’ll get into that later). If you want to ply it though, you’ve got a lot of options. (I’ll get to how to actually ply later, this is just discussing those options.)

Many Methods of Plying

Plying Straight Off The Spindles

First, if you’ve got multiple spindles capable of spinning the same weight of yarn, you could just set your full spindle aside and spin another one. You’d need at least 3 spindles (the third, ideally, a bigger plying spindle) to get a 2 ply yarn, and 4 spindles to get a 3 ply with this sort of setup. This is what I do with supported spindles, since I have many, and I can attest that it saves a lot of winding time and is terribly convenient.

But it’s also probably not doable for many people, and it’s ridiculous to buy 3 drop spindles when you’re just getting into it !

Wind And Store

Second, you can wind your singles onto something for storage, and then use your now-empty spindle to spin another singles. Two great things to store yarn on are small rocks and empty toilet paper (loo) rolls.

Winding it around a small rock is better than just winding it into a ball for plying, since the rock will weight it and stop it from flying up in the air once you start plying. A big pebble works great. With this setup, you’d want to put all your balls of singles in a bowl or container of some kind, hold the ends of each, attach it to your spindle, and let them roll around as you ply.

They can tangle (mine usually don’t, but it can happen), so the toilet paper rolls might be an upgrade--these can be put on a stick, and the stick can be put on something (or you can poke two holes in a cardboard box, put the stick through one hole, load the rolls onto it, then put it through the other hole as well) to keep it stationary so that the rolls... well, roll. This requires some storage space (usually if you do this often, you don’t wanna make a new one every time, so keeping it is preferable) and is honestly not a huge upgrade... unless you have a ball winder that can wind the yarn onto the TP rolls for you, in which case this is a big time saver. If you don’t have one and don’t have issues with tangling, the rocks will probably work just as well and take up a lot less space.

Fig D: Diagram of a Simple Ply Box

Ply Bracelet

Thirdly, if you want a 2 ply yarn specifically, you could wind it onto your hand and make something called an Andean Plying Bracelet. Here’s a link to a page that goes into it in detail. I highly, highly recommend learning how to do these. They look a little complex, and I couldn’t tell you the motions if my life depended on it, but I can do them with my eyes closed while not paying a whit of attention. They rely entirely on muscle memory, so once you learn them, they’re easy as pie.

The whole point of a plying bracelet is to get 2 strands of yarn out of 1 singles. You could of course wind a singles into a ball, then wind half of it onto another ball, and then ply from there. But a plying bracelet is a lot faster, and will always match up exactly.

One downside of a plying bracelet is that, as the name implies, it goes on your wrist. So if you keep needing to put your spindle down to take care of other things, you’ll need to pull off the plying bracelet as well (or carry the whole thing with you). They can be stored on a cylindrical object that’s smaller than your wrist, or sometimes also draped on hooks or put on the spindle shaft itself. I don’t usually encounter problems when pulling on or off my plying bracelets--it doesn’t seem to tangle them--but if you’re plying while cooking or watching a child or something else that might require you to stop immediately and hurry over to whatever needs tending, then you might want to save the ply bracelet for another day.

Chain Plying

Fourth, you could wind your singles into one ball, and then chain ply it. Chain plying is a way to turn one singles into a 3 plied yarn. It also preserves stripes in your singles (we’ll talk about this in more detail later), so it can be perfect for a very colorful singles.

Chain plying is simple. Do you know how to tie a slip knot ? Of course, because you needed one to start spinning ! (Although here’s the link to how to tie a slip knot again, if you need it.) So that means you basically know how to chain ply as well.

Step one: tie a slip knot at the end of your singles (you want a very short tail, since that’s basically waste). Make the resulting loop nice and big, and lay it over your singles. Pull the singles through the loop--now you have a new loop ! Make it nice and big as well. Lay it over your singles. Pull the singles through.  Repeat until you’re at the end of your singles (try to have your last loop be a very small one). To finish, place the end through the loop, and then just pull on it until it tightens the loop. Note that you typically are adding ply twist and winding on as you do this, but you can also just chain ply an entire single and wind it into a ball as you go, then add twist once you’re done. That can be a lot easier to wrangle, if you’re having difficulties.

You might notice that this is basically a really open crochet chain. Yep ! It needs to be open so that the twist can enter the yarn, but you can do very big or somewhat smaller loops--although no matter what, you need to keep the loops large enough to at least hook a couple fingers through them so that you can make the next loop. Note that sometimes, the bump at the start of each loop can be felt and/or seen. Also note that chain plying is best done with smooth singles that can slide against each other. It can be done with a bumpy, lumpy yarn that sticks to itself, but bumps and lumps will catch as you try to chain, and if the yarn sticks to itself then it won’t slide nicely, which can really slow you down.

You may find that you prefer holding the ball of singles as you chain, or you may want it in a container on your lap/on the floor. You could also make a little wrist pouch to hold it, although take friction into account--if you make it out of wool yarn, choose a smooth one.

Ply Ball

Fifth is a sort of hybrid of a few of the others I’ve already mentioned, called a ply ball. To make a ply ball, simply wind two or more singles together into a ball (I’d suggest winding them around a small rock for a ply ball, too). The number of singles you wind in your ply ball will be the number of plies your yarn will have. A chain plied single wound into a ball is also functionally a ply ball.

Ply balls are extremely portable--you only ever need to work with one at a time, so you can just keep it in your pocket without worry of tangling, and it’s not attached to you or a box or another spindle. The downside is that it generally requires you to either have multiple spindles (ex: fill up two spindles, wind both off into one ply ball) or do extra winding (ex: fill up your spindle, wind it off to a rock for storage, fill up your spindle again, now wind from the spindle and the rock to get your ply ball. Add more winding for more plies).

However, you can also wind a ply ball from plying bracelet (yes, that’s more winding--but now it’s portable, and you’ve just turned one singles into a 2 strand ply ball) or even chain a singles, but wind it into a ply ball instead of plying it then and there to get a 3 strand ply ball (this also might let you play around with really long or really short chains without having to think about ergonomics as much, since your spindle isn’t involved).

Ply balls can also be helpful if you’re having issues wrangling your singles while you try to ply, since they’re laid together already--so they’re worth an attempt if you are having trouble keeping your yarn in line while plying.

There’s a short (but full of tips) article on ply balls here.

There’s even more ways to ply--look into "plying from a center pull ball” (similar to a plying bracelet, but requires a ball winder or a nostepinne) and “ply on the fly” (chain plying at the same time as spinning the singles--highly portable instant gratification). There may also be others that I’ve forgotten or not heard of, hopefully mentioned by others in the notes !

So Many Ways to Ply--How to Choose ?

So, every plying method and every number of plies has its own effects on the finished yarn, and you can use those effects to get the yarn you’re after.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with yarn weights such as lace weight and worsted weight, you should read this first !

A singles is great for your soft, fluffy, luxury stuff--cowls, hats, mittens that won't get a lot of wear, or shawls. It also preserves the colors that you spun exactly--so if you spun a beautiful perfect rainbow singles and the most important thing to you is that it stays a rainbow, you could leave it as a singles ! You can knit, crochet, weave, and nalbind with them like normal (I actually really prefer them for nalbinding--they felt easier so the joining is quicker), although because they haven’t been plied, they’re a lot weaker to abrasion and snapping. So they’re not ideal for things that need to be durable, and if you’re spinning short and/or fine fibers, you may find that even with some care they still don’t last very long, so keep in mind that stuff made from singles probably won’t be passed down or anything like that. But still, I’ve knit several small pouches from singles that have held up just fine being tossed around my room. One advantage to note is that you have the most yardage and the least spinning time this way, so it’s a very ‘time cheap’ yarn--you spin 100 yards/90 meters of singles, and you get 100 yards/90 meters of yarn. No time spent plying. However, it is as thin or thick as you spun it, and however consistent or inconsistent your spinning is, that’s your end result ! A lot of spinners (me) balk at this.

2 ply is next. I use 2 ply for almost everything besides socks--it’s quick, it’s fairly durable, and it looks very pretty (and an error correction: is ideal for lace). A 2 ply halves the amount of yarn you end up with--if you spin 100 yards/90 meters and 2 ply it, you’ll end up with 50 yards/45 meters. It also has a distinct ‘handspun’ look--2 ply knits up to a messier fabric. I really love that effect, but if you want a neat, uniform fabric, don’t do a 2 ply ! I’m not sure how it affects crochet or weaving, unfortunately, but do I suspect it’s similar with crochet. It also bulks up your yarn--it’ll be a little bit less than double the thickness of your singles, usually. 2 ply holds up alright to gentle/moderate daily wear, and is great for hats, gloves that don’t need to be hard wearing, scarves, and bags that won’t need to bear a huge amount of weight. It’s a workhorse yarn--you can use it for almost anything, and it’ll probably be okay. The only thing I would never use it for is socks--that’s a 3 or 4 ply project.

Let’s talk 3 ply ! 3 ply can be achieved either through chain plying or else as a traditional 3 ply--meaning 3 separate singles all plied together. You’ll get very different effects from these two methods in terms of both color and even-ness. If your singles had any stripes of color, with chain ply they will remain as stripes (this could be an alternative to your rainbow singles !). With a traditional 3 ply, your stripes will all blur together, and you’ll get a varied and multicolored yarn. You will get 1/3 of the yardage/meterage of your original singles, so a 3 ply yarn takes longer to make than a singles or a 2 ply. But it is also about 3 times thicker than your singles, so if you’re struggling to spin thick singles but want a thick yarn, 3 ply is a great option.

If your singles are very even, you’ll see no real different between chain ply and traditional 3 ply (except for the bumps at the start of each loop--they are usually visible as well). However, if your singles are kind of all over the place, chain plying magnifies this. On the other hand, a traditional 3 ply really evens out any inconsistencies. Even though I’ve got a few years under my belt, I am not a very consistent spinner, simply because I can neither visualize nor remember the weight I ought to be spinning, so it’s always a total guess (damn aphantasia). Beginners are also often inconsistent spinners, just due to lack of muscle memory. Either way, a traditional 3 ply can be really helpful in creating a fairly smooth, even yarn from really wild, inconsistent singles.

Fig E: comparisons of chain ply and traditional 3 ply, in terms of consistency

Lastly, 4 ply. 4 ply will turn your heavy laceweight singles into a light worsted, if it puffs up in blocking enough. I love 4 ply for my supported spindles mostly, since those spin very fine yarn and I don’t have a use for anything finer than sock weight yarn. It’s also very durable, and a laid 4 ply (like a traditional 3 ply--just 4 strands held together) make good socks. A cabled 4 ply (take two 2 ply yarns and ply them again) makes terrible socks, but is still very durable and has an interesting rope like appearance and texture. 4 ply in general is great for socks, bags, blankets, and especially sweaters, as it doesn’t pill much and will stand up to heavy wear. However, you have to spin 4 times the singles to get your finished yarn--a 100 yard/90 meter 4 ply skein requires 400 yards/360 meters of singles, and then more time for plying. So these are rather slow. They’re an awesome option for a fiber that refuses to spin up to anything other than the finest lace, and they will make great objects and garments that will last for a good long while.

Past 4 ply, you kind of just get rope. I haven’t ventured past 4 ply much--give it a shot if you’re curious !

The Why of Ply is a great article on the different aspects of different plies, and touches on some stuff I don’t mention (like stitch definition and cables) if you want to know more ! Highly recommend it.

How to Ply

So... you know at least a few methods of plying now, know how many plies you want your finished yarn to have, and you may have even already wound a ply ball or filled all of your spindles. Which means it’s finally time to ply everything.

To start, you need to attach all your plies to your spindle. For the methods that I’ve discussed (with the exception of chain plying), you’re going to do the following: gather the ends of your plies together, and make one slipknot with all of them. Then put the slipknot on your spindle below the whorl, the same way you would when spinning singles (and when not using a leader).

For chain plying: chain your singles until you’ve got about a foot or a third of a meter. Now you want to attach it to your spindle. Take the very first slip knot loop and slip it onto the spindle, below the whorl.

Now, secure your yarn by wrapping it around the hook or else with a half hitch knot, and spin the spindle counterclockwise (anticlockwise). You should immediately see the plies twisting together to form plied yarn.

From here, you will proceed basically the same way as you did when spinning singles--you’ll add twist to your plies, then wind on. This can be a really great opportunity to practice doing things while the spindle is in motion; you won’t be drafting, but depending on the type of plying you’re doing, you may be chaining, pulling from a ply bracelet, or simply letting the plies slide through your fingers (you do want to tension them and keep the twist from getting past your hand). If that requires too much coordination, feel free to park and ply--that is, spin the spindle to add excess twist, park it and let it into your yarn, then wind on.

If you try to ply your yarn the same direction that you spun it, you’ll notice that it doesn’t really turn into a cohesive yarn, and instead becomes wiry and the plies don’t slot neatly together. If you notice this happening, turn your spindle in the other direction. A yarn that is both spun and plied in the same direction won’t be stable or strong, and will tangle the second you try to work with it.

This is why it’s helpful to be consistent in which direction you choose to spin your singles, by the way--if you always spin wool clockwise, then you can know with certainty that it will be plied counterclockwise.

We refer to yarn as having either Z twist or S twist (this refers to whatever the finished twist is, so a singles that you’re never going to ply, or a 3 ply yarn, for example). This just makes it a little easier to talk about and recognize what we’re doing.

Fig F: S and Z Twist in plied and singles yarn

It’s essentially a mnemonic device that allows you to glance at your yarn and go “Oh! I spun these three singles counterclockwise, so I should ply them all together clockwise.” I often have to draw an S or Z in the air (just like I sometimes have to draw an L in the air to pretend I can reliably tell left from right), but it is pretty foolproof and will prevent you from, for example, trying to ply an S twist singles with a Z twist singles and then wondering what on earth went wrong.

By the way, this page has a really helpful chart on what direction you might want to spin in based on what you intend to do with the finished yarn. For example, crocheting (right handed style) with S twisted yarn will remove the twist as you work, but knitting in continental or English style (or crocheting left handed style) with that same yarn will add twist. Most spinners spin their singles to have Z twist and ply them with S twist--but if you’re a crocheter or knit Eastern style this will unply your yarn as you work, and you are encouraged to try reversing things to have better results with your handspun projects. The more you know !

Now, back to your plying. You may be wondering how you’re supposed to know how much ply twist to add, which is a great question, because plyback tests don’t work when you’re actually plying. Those are for when you’re spinning your singles. Instead, I do what I call a “hanging test”. Just hold out a length of plied yarn between your hands and let it hang (not pulling it taut--the yarn should have a nice downturned curve). A balanced yarn--that is, a yarn that has equal and correct amounts of spin and ply twist--will just hang nicely. An underplied (or underspun) yarn will usually also hang nicely, but you will see gaps inbetween the plies. This is no good at all. Gaps won’t just make your yarn look bad, they'll also make it split when you work with it, and will be less durable and more prone to pilling, felting, and eventual disintegration after much use.

On the other end of the spectrum, an overplied yarn (which may have both too much spin and ply twist, or may be underspun and then overplied in an attempt to fix ones mistake--which won’t work, by the way. You need to go back and add more spin twist to your singles) will twist in the middle instead of hanging. If it only twists a tiny bit, you’re fine. But if it twists a lot, there’s problems. Overtwisted 2 ply yarns tend to be aggressively smooth--this is only relevant for 2 ply, since those have a sort of pearled silhouette. If your 2 ply is smooth, then you’ve most certainly overplied it. 3 and 4 ply are always smooth, however, so a smooth profile for one of those is to be expected.

Fig G: Ply twist in 2 ply yarns. Do these yarns have S or Z twist ?

Don’t worry if your first yarns aren’t perfectly spun or plied (really--they won’t be). Every spinner is striving for something different with their yarn. Some are aiming for total technical perfection, some aim for exquisite fineness, some aim for beautiful colorways and for finding the softest and most lovely breed of sheep. Some just want to spin, some just want usable yarn, some just want a pair of socks that last on their feet and find commercial sock yarn to be about as durable as wet paper (that would be me). You certainly don’t have to know what you want to get out of spinning right away, but the point is that every single spinner has their own standards that they hold themself to, and you don’t need to (and shouldn’t !) try to meet others standards. Especially when still learning, but also just all the time and forever.

I’ve Plied My Yarn, Now What ? OR I Just Want Singles, Now What ?

Now your yarn needs to come off the spindle ! But not the way we’ve been taking singles to ply off the spindle--we need to make what’s called a hank. A hank is basically a loop of yarn that’s been tied so that it’s nice and secure. These loops can be pretty big (mine are all 2 yards/1.8 meters) or as small as the distance around your hand--it all comes down to what you wind your yarn onto.

I have already made a tutorial that goes into quite a bit of depth (and has pictures, even), so I’m gonna speed through this part a little bit.

1. Find something to wind your yarn around. A Niddy noddy is the preferred tool for the job here, and will make it much faster to wind and thoughtlessly simple to calculate the yardage/meterage of your yarn (I’ve seen people use yarn swifts as well, and they certainly look very speedy), but they are by no means required. Substitutes include: a large hardcover book, the back of one or two chairs, your hand (ideal for very small amounts of yarn), your forearm (for smallish amounts of yarn--wrap between the thumb and forefinger and go down to the elbow, then back up), or anything else that won’t deform with pressure and is holding relatively still.

2. Wind your yarn around that thing. You may need to start with a slipknot to attach it to whatever it is you’re winding on, or else a piece of tape. If you’re using your forearm or hand, you can simply pinch the end to hold it in place. Unlike when winding your yarn onto your spindle, when winding your yarn into a hank, you want to use as little tension as possible so that you can get a more accurate measurement of length later on. Also try to keep your winding tidy--in an ideal world, the yarn should be traveling almost the same path every time, not a few inches to the left one time, then wildly skewed to the right the next time.

3. Tie off your hank. Once you’ve finished winding, you need to secure your hank so that it doesn’t tangle. You can use either scrap yarn or else the ends of the yarn you just made (I prefer the latter, since the ends tend not to be very good anyway, so at least they don’t go to waste. In this case, snap off or cut both ends--the length you should cut depends on how thick your hank is). Find where both ends are--you will need to tie knots near the ends so that you can attach the ends to them. Tie an overhand knot a few inches/5cm below the first end, and then hold that end alongside one of your strands of knot-tying yarn, and tie another overhand knot. Repeat this with the other end. Make sure you haven’t overlooked any strands of yarn and left them out of the tie--that’s a very easy way to get tangles.

4. Remove your hank. Gently push your hank off of whatever you wound it on. Put it to the side--now we want to measure. Use soft measuring tape (or a piece of inelastic string or yarn, if you don’t have one--you will then need to measure that against a rigid measuring tape) to span the entire path that your yarn traveled. Write down that number, and now count the number of strands in your hank. Multiply the two numbers together. Now convert your inches or centimeters into yards or meters, and you have your yardage or meterage !

Ex: You wrapped your yarn around your palm, which measures 10 inches. There are 41 strands. 10x41=410. 410 inches is roughly 11 yards. Or: You wrapped your yarn around a small book, which measured 21 cm. There are 50 strands. 21x50=1050. 1050 cm is of course 10.5 meters.

Fig H: Winding a hank on a hardcover book.

It can be very helpful to label your handspun yarn. The yardage/meterage is critical information when it comes to using patterns, less so if you don’t use patterns. But there’s other info that you might still find handy to know later on, such as what the fiber is, where and when you got it, when you spun it, how you plied it, any info on the dye job, what the yarn weight is, what spindle you spun it on, whether it is part of a set, how much it weighs, etc.

Some of my really verbose labels might look like this: Avocado dye and copper mordant hand dyed in the fleece 2020 Cormo Bought 2019 Spun for 2020 TDF 2 plied on wheel 210 yards 3.4 oz light worsted weight

But most of my labels just have the yardage and breed, if I label them at all. I tend to document things online and also remember spinning my yarn better than I remember anything else going on in my life, so I’m a little lazy about labeling. Your labels should include the information that you think you’ll find helpful in the future, or that you know you won’t have another way to recover if you end up forgetting.

Blocking your yarn

Don’t attach that label just yet--we aren’t totally done with our yarn. It has one or two more steps before it’s ready to be used, and that first step is called blocking. There’s a few ways to block yarn--wet blocking, steam blocking, and resting.

Wet blocking: Get your hank of yarn wet, using anything other than very hot water (this could start felting your yarn). You could run it under the tap for a minute or else let it sit in a bowl of water with a little hair conditioner for about half an hour, if you wanted your yarn to be a little softer, then rinse the yarn. Squeeze as much water out as you can, then hang it to dry. You can (and should) also snap or thwack it--but I've gone into detail on that in a link below.

Steam blocking: Get a source of steam going--like a pot of water simmering or a very hot tap running. Using tongs or a long wooden spoon, hold your yarn over the steam and slowly rotate it until the whole skein has been steamed. Don’t let the yarn touch the water.

Resting: If neither option above is possible, you can also just let your yarn sit for at least a week. This lets the twist settle down, so it’ll be a lot easier to work with. However, it doesn’t do anything else that blocking does, so it won’t really show you your “finished” yarn, and may lead to problems down the road.

So--why did we just do that stuff ? Well, we blocked our yarn to reset the fibers, basically. During the spinning, we put the fibers under tension, and they more or less stay in that slightly stretched state. But it’s not really stable--the next time they get wet, they’ll spring back into the natural crimp that the wool wants to have (this changes drastically depending on breed and even individual sheep), and will often puff up. The hank might lose a little length and your yarn’s weight (not as in ounces or grams, but as in lace, dk, or bulky weight) often increases some. So if you’ve made your yarn into something before blocking it, with the perfect gauge and nice drape, the first time you wash it you’ll find that it’s thicker and a little smaller and has less drape. It might not fit anymore, or the seams might be messed up.

This is all entirely avoidable if you just block it before you do anything with it, so I highly recommend that you do.

The other thing that blocking does is set the twist, so your yarn won’t kink up as you work with it--even a perfect, balanced yarn can kink up as you work if the twist is live--which makes it a lot more pleasant. Resting sets the twist as well, as mentioned above.

I’ve gone into blocking in more detail in this post here, if you’d like to know more--I’d especially recommend reading the last section about snapping and thwacking your yarn.

Once it’s fully dry (and remember--wool can hold a lot of water and still feel dry, so give it a little extra drying time just to be sure) it only needs to be wound into a ball before you can use it ! Congratulations on your handspun yarn--that’s a real achievement.

Storing your yarn

If you don’t plan on using it right away, you may want to skein your hanks up to keep them compact and tidy. To do this, put your thumbs on the inside of your hank, and pull it taut. Then, one thumb at a time, twist in the opposite direction that you plied in. Your hank should start to kind of look like rope. Once it has a lot of twist (enough that you’re struggling to add more), find the center point of the hank, and fold it. With 2 yard hanks I tend to fold it over my knee, but a doorknob or something else would work just as well. It should immediately look like an oversized piece of yarn--that’s because we just twisted it one direction, and then folded it in two and let the excess twist twist it in the other direction, which is the same way you ply yarn ! There should be a loop at each end where your thumb was--take your thumbs out and put one loop through the other. Now you can attach your label and you’re good to go !

If it’s a very small hank (one that’s been wound around the palm, especially) you’ll probably just want to wind it into a ball instead. You could do this with any length of yarn--it’s not an ideal way to store wool yarn ultra long term, since staying wound into a ball can stretch out the fibers again, which means you’d need to wind it into a hank and re-block it if you wanted to make an accurate gauge swatch or something. Short term (a year or less) it’s just fine.

If you’re wondering how to wind up a big hank into a ball without tangling, just sit down with your knees up, and put your knees inside the hank, then move your knees apart until the hank is taut. Now you can wind in relative peace, free from tangles. You can also use a yarn swift, if you’ve got one.

I would recommend, by the way, using up some of your first skeins as soon as possible (you might want to keep your very first skein so that later you can see how far you’ve come--I really wish I kept mine). You won’t know how your spinning is until you’ve used it, so to prevent you from getting to skein #40 thinking you’ve been doing great, only to discover that your yarn is actually unusable... use your early yarn ! Evaluate it, make judgements, and learn from it. Does it need more twist ? Is it very lumpy ? Are there lots of spots where it went thin ? Do you like how the colors turned out with the plying method you chose ? These are all good questions to ask yourself as you use your yarn.

Moving On From Park and Draft

Once you’re comfortable with the park and draft method, you might want to try moving on to true suspended spinning. As I said earlier--it may not be for you, and that’s fine, but you won’t know if you don’t try. True suspended is quite a bit faster than park and draft, so if you want to speed up a little, you should give it a shot.

In park and draft, you first add twist, then park the spindle to draft your fibers into yarn. In true suspended spinning, you set the spindle going and draft while the twist is being added. This eliminates the whole ‘standing/sitting there with your arm outstretched, waiting for your yarn to accumulate twist’ section.

The easiest way to get into true suspended spinning is to work your way up to it--try drafting just a little bit while your spindle is building up twist during park and draft. To give yourself more time, set the spindle spinning slower. Then try drafting a bit more. The goal is to draft at the same rate that twist is added, meaning that you can wind on pretty much as soon as the yarn is too long to keep spinning.

The trick here is to adjust the speed at which your spindle spins rather than the speed at which you draft. You can only draft so fast before your technique gets sloppy, and past that you’ll be focused far more on keeping pace with the twist being added than on drafting evenly.

So if I find that I spun my spindle too aggressively, I still it immediately and try again, but slower this time.

I answered an ask about this a while ago where I went into a little bit more depth, if you’re interested.

And if you haven’t seen it, the pinned post on my blog is a lot of stuff like that all collected into one post for easier perusal. Some of them I’ve already linked to earlier in this post, but others I haven’t.

Small Projects, Scrap Projects, and Big Projects: Tips for All

You may be wondering, What the hell am I supposed to do with this yarn ? This isn’t even enough for a pair of fingerless gloves !

Which is a fair concern--endlessly accumulating small skeins of yarn can be frustrating if you don’t know how to use them up.

Drop spindles are limited in how much yarn you can make on them, and while you can make huge skeins by joining smaller skeins together, they may not all be the same weight ! Or they may not match. Or it may just be really boring.

You may also be doing a lot of experimenting, and ending up with 30 yard/meter skeins that you can’t even make something tiny with.

Small Skeins: For single skeins that are too small for gloves, hats, etc, you may still be able to make things like pouches (for yarn, crochet hooks, dice, coins, etc), baby socks or hats, coasters, or other small items. My spinning wheel oil holder is a little basket crocheted out of some handspun, and I have a mini tape measurer on my keys with a cover crocheted over it from handspun as well. You might have to invent things to do with your handspun, but using items that you made enriches your life--I promise.

Scrap Projects: What about tiny skeins ? Or maybe you’ve already made all the coasters and baby socks and spinning oil holders that you could possibly need, and now the small skeins are piling up again. I humbly submit the Scrap Yarn Project--my favorite type of project by far. I’ve been slowly working on a handspun scrap blanket for about 2.5 years, using tiny scraps, small skeins, and leftovers from projects alike. I knit 5x5 inch stockinette squares (some have colorwork, some have different stitch patterns, but mostly I let the yarn be the star) and for the most part just try make squares that are thick enough to stay warm but thin enough to have a little drape. It’s an incredibly satisfying project.

Fig I: An older image of the author’s handspun scrap blanket in progress. The yarns used range from fingering weight to super bulky, and are spun in all sorts of different ways. But it still feels very cohesive.

I like the square approach (and of course if you wanted to crochet granny squares, that would work perfectly too) because it’s modular, so you can decide halfway through that you don’t want a sweater, you want a bag--and then just sew the squares into a bag, instead. But it doesn’t need to be squares by any means--you could also make scrap yarn sweaters, hats, socks, scarves, etc., that are constructed normally.

The only thing to look out for is yarn weight--in some cases, you might want the weights to all be very similar. Socks, for instance, won’t do well if you have parts that are bulky weight and parts that are light fingering weight. You could hold yarns together to get similar weights if necessary, or just only add to the project when you’ve got another scrap skein of worsted weight or whatever. For squares you can use any weight of yarn if you want, but you should change your hook or needle size to get a fabric that’s a similar density, so your stitch count will change from square to square.

Big Projects: These can be difficult even for experienced spinners, because consistency is key to ending up with an even fabric. Not from armspan of yarn to armspan, but from skein to skein--if the weight changes, things can suddenly get much more complicated while you try to correct for the skeins that are too thick or too thin.

One way to try and mitigate that is to not ply anything until you’ve finished spinning all the singles--that is, if you need 10 skeins of 2 ply, spin 20 spindles worth, then go through and pair off your stored singles, thin with thick and average with average. It can definitely be more tedious to do it this way, but if you’re worried about consistency, it might be a good idea.

It also might not be necessary. Try to let your mind stretch back over the whole course of human history--as a species, we’ve been spinning yarns for pretty much all of it, and until very recently, what you spun was what clothed you. If the skeins you spun for your new cloak were all different weights, well... you probably either repurposed those skeins (IF you could, and that’s a pretty sketchy IF) or you shrugged, wore a lumpy cloak, and got on with life. Perfection isn’t everything, my friend. Either way, do what’s going to make you happy. For me, I’d be just fine with a lumpy cloak.

Out Of The Basics: A Few Further Pushes Into The World of Spinning

There’s many, many techniques out there, and an infinite variety of yarns to be spun. Some require tools, some don’t. Some are very advanced, and some quite simple. There are many other tools to spin on besides drop spindles. There’s also processes related to spinning--such as dyeing, fiber prepping, and wool washing--which can greatly enhance your spinning enjoyment and variety. I can’t teach them to you today, but I can certainly tell you about them so that you can look into them yourself !

Changing Up Your Fiber or Techniques to Get Different Effects

We touched on this earlier in the section about the number of plies--a 2 ply yarn will knit up into a bumpy, slightly irregular fabric, and a 3 or 4 ply will be very regular and neat. But that’s not the extent of what you can do to change your yarn up (without buying anything new). I’m going to throw some terms around now--you’ll need to google them, because this is already absurdly long.

For one thing, if you have roving, you can try splitting it lengthwise and fractal plying your yarn for a very beautiful self-striping but marled effect. You can also try spinning it from the fold on multicolored roving, which keeps the colors separate instead of muddied, which can happen otherwise.

With any fiber, you can always mix and match, or add pops of color ! If you’re spinning a bunch of gray rolags, for instance, you can occasionally detach the rolag, spin a tiny bit of blue roving, reattach the rolag, and go back to spinning. Depending on how you ply it, this could produce almost specks of blue or else slips and streaks.

Speaking of plying, the way you make a 2 ply can really change the colorway of the yarn if your fiber is a gradient or multicolored. Say you’ve got roving that’s a gradient from white to purple--if you do a plying bracelet, your yarn will be part barberpole, part gradient: a purple ply with a white ply at one end, and then gradually transition to the midpoint of lavender-pink in the middle, with both plies the same color. But if you plied it the other way, by wrapping your singles onto storage rocks and then plying from those, you’d get a yarn that’s got one pink ply and one white ply at one end, and one pink ply and purple ply at the other.

Chained 3 ply versus traditional 3 ply will make a huge difference as well. If your fiber has stripes, chain plying it will preserve them perfectly (as long as you’re careful to start a loop at the color change--or if you wanted it to fade in a little, you could start partway through a color change), whereas a traditional 3 ply will always marl them, no matter how careful you are about evenly splitting your fiber into 3 sections.

If you like really colorful and bright yarns, you might enjoy cabled 4 ply (where you ply two 2 plied yarns together). If your starting 2 plies are already colorful, you’ll get super colorful yarn with a cabled 4 ply--to me it always looks like dashed lines in different colors.

A laid 4 ply can also make some interesting color combinations, and is perhaps the ideal candidate for mixing random singles together, since it has 3 other plies each singles can hopefully be tempered by. And a yarn that has 3 plies of one color and 1 ply of another color can be interesting indeed !

It’s not just color that you makes an exciting new yarn, though--you can also try making boucle, or thread plying or autowrapping, or spinning beehives, spinning beads into your yarn, spinning thick and thin yarn... the possibilities are almost endless. I’d highly recommend giving “The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs” by Sarah Anderson a read if you can--she discusses all of these and many more, and shows how to do them. Other good books that’ll show you how to make lots of different kinds of yarn, or how to tailor your yarn to your needs, are: “Yarnitecture”, by Jillian Moreno, “Spin Art” by Jacey Boggs, and “Yarn Spinning With A Modern Twist”, by Vanessa Kroening. Your library may well have copies, and if not you could likely request they buy it.

You Don’t Have to Drop Your Spindles

...Because there’s other kinds of spindles ! And things that aren’t spindles, but on which you can also spin !

There are Turkish Spindles, which are functionally almost identical to drop spindles (and you can drop them, to be fair), but you wrap your yarn around two detachable interlocked arms that also function as the whorl. When you remove the arms and spindle shaft from the turtle (not cone) of singles, you can then 2 ply with it immediately using both ends. Turkish spindles are great if you love 2 ply and hate winding.

There are Supported Spindles, which come in many forms but are essentially fancy sticks with pointy tips that you spin in bowls. These have more winding than drop spindles because you spin in very short lengths at a time and wind onto a temporary cop that’s just below the tip (it’s much faster than if you wound all the way down to the cop near the bottom). However, you use them while sitting or even (with a bit of wrangling) laying down, and your arms stay in a comfortable, much more relaxed position while spinning. It also spins, as a default, finer yarn than your average drop spindle (I can achieve a very fine and consistent laceweight on any supported spindle, but have only managed that on my tiniest and lightest drop spindle). And they are very fast tools--with proficiency, they can be much faster than drop spindles. Supported spindles are great if you find drop spindles painful, if you have low energy, if you’re mobility impaired, or if you want to spin finer yarn.

There are Spinning Wheels, which come in many shapes and sizes but are the fastest way to make yarn by hand. There are a few objects which could fall under the umbrella of a spinning wheel (namely Walking Wheels, Charkah Wheels, and Electric Wheels) which do not have treadles, but the majority of spinning wheels are powered by foot treadles and can spin faster than you can spin a drop spindle. They also remove winding from your list of duties (for the most part), since the flyer will wrap your newly spun yarn onto the bobbin as you go. New spinning wheels can be prohibitively expensive, but you can also find used ones for ludicrously cheap on craigslist, at estate or garage sales, at antique shops, or other places where old items might be sold. (You can also often find them at affordable but not cheap prices at fiber festivals). Be sure to research the parts of a spinning wheel before you try to buy a used one from a non-spinner--there are many SWSO’s (Spinning Wheel Shaped Objects) out there that will fool you. Spinning wheels are great if you want to make larger amounts of yarn, or want to make yarn faster.

There are Electric Wheels, which are small machines that will add twist and wind the yarn onto the bobbin for you, so all you have to do is draft. New low end models are much cheaper than new spinning wheels, and they take up far less space. They also remove the element of treadling, so if you are intrigued by spinning wheels but have weak legs in any capacity, these can save you a lot of pain. I have a spinning wheel and can’t spin on it much anymore, because my knees and hips dislocate almost immediately. I switched to supported spinning primarily, but an electric wheel would be a good substitute as well. Electric wheels are great if you want to make more yarn faster, but can’t afford a spinning wheel or don’t have the space for them. They are also one of the more accessible tools for those with severe mobility impairments.

And there’s still more, although I can’t do a pitch for all of them xD. There’s Tahkli Spindles for spinning cotton, Navajo Spindles that are long thigh-spinning tools, Medieval Spindles that are easy to whittle replacements for if you break your spindle a lot, and even more beyond that. Many cultures have their own traditional spinning tool, each with their own techniques and strengths, and if drop spindles aren’t doing it for you but you still want to spin, I implore you to check out other kinds of spindles !

From Sheep To Sweater (Washing and Processing A Raw Fleece)

Most people learn to spin from roving (even if it might not be a very good beginner’s preparation), although there’s also rolags, batts, top (both commercial and hand combed), sliver, and cloud. But what if you could start with a raw fleece (unwashed, with vegetable matter and lanolin and who knows what else) and make things out of that ?

There’s some immediate advantages to starting with a raw fleece (even over a washed fleece). For one, raw fleeces tend to sell very cheap. This will depend on where you live, but the vast majority of fiber that I buy these days is raw fleece, and I’ve never spent less on fiber. At a fiber festival, I once paid $10 USD for 2 pounds (slightly under 1 kilo) of raw Shetland fleece. So--they’re cheap. As soon as someone starts putting work into a fleece, like washing it or dyeing it, the price immediately jumps.

Second, if you’re looking for the most bang for your buck, starting from a raw fleece is the way to go. You need to wash it, skirt it (take out the really terrible or gross bits), perhaps sort or grade it if it’s multicolored or there’s clear variation in fiber quality, dye it (if desired--I only dye my white fleeces, as I quite like brown and gray and black), process it into spinnable fiber, spin it, ply it, and then knit/crochet/nalbind/weave/do whatever else your heart desires with it. A single raw fleece can last me a month even if I work on it tirelessly, and I might have paid $20 USD--a little over an hour of wages for me.

It also brings you a lot closer to your work. I can’t say I felt very attached to my fiber when I worked exclusively with roving, but sorting through a pile of hand washed Southdown Babydoll locks while I comb them into top to spin into sock yarn on supported spindles that I whittled myself--I can tell you, I feel pretty damn connected to my work, to the ridiculous little sheep whose wool I have, to my socks, and to the wool itself. It adds a lot of depth, both to the experience, and to my understanding.

It’s also honestly pretty easy. To wash a fleece, you need a dedicated wool pot (as in, don’t cook in it again), a bit of dish soap, and some time. Put the fleece in--don’t crowd it, just work in batches if your pot can’t easily fit all of the fleece--add cold water and a squirt of dish soap, and let it cook on the stove for about 45 minutes, without a lid. Don’t let it boil--ideally it should be steaming but not quite simmering. You can use a dedicated wool spoon/tongs to gently and infrequently stir the wool. The water should get pretty gross. After 45 minutes, start the tap running (you need to rinse the wool in very hot water--if you let temperature shock happen, it could felt), drain the water, and rinse the fleece. Then repeat--filling up the pot with hot water now--until the water stops looking dirty at the end of the 45 minute cooking time. Rinse it one more time, and then let your wool dry, ideally on a clothesline but over a vent/spread out flat on a towel is fine too.

Yes, it really is that easy. If you’re worried about felting or otherwise ruining the entire fleece, you can always start by washing just a handful, so that way if you ruin it there’s not much waste. But I’ve washed at least a couple dozen fleeces that exact way, and I’ve never ruined one.

After washing and drying your fleece, you need to prepare it. I typically prepare enough to spin for a day at a time, but you could also do it all at once if that’s more your style. There’s many ways to prepare wool, and I’ll discuss most of them at least in brief, but we’ll start with teasing. This is where you take a lock in your hands, and tease it open. Let any VM (vegetable matter) fall out or pick it out yourself, and open the lock up to the point that you can no longer see any lock structure. It’s now spinnable, just like that ! This is a pretty slow method, but if you start out your raw fleece journey buying just a few ounces/50ish grams of fleece, it’s perfectly doable to tease it all open by hand.

If you have money to put into the endeavor, a humble pair of hand cards (70 TPI will card most wools), or you can kind of make do with two pet brushes like these (although at that point, spend $10 USD more and you have a pair of hand cards, so idk what the point of that is, unless you already have them) is a very good place to start. Load the fiber onto one card, card it until it’s uniform, roll it into a rolag, and it’s spinnable !

You also have hand combs, which are a lot more expensive than hand cards, but which can process very long fibers and can get out all the vm. Cards don’t remove a lot of vm, so combs is the way to go for super vm-y fleeces. They also produce hand combed top, which spins up into a very compact, strong, and abrasion resistant yarn--great for socks.

Past that are drum carders, which are machines in the way that spinning wheels are machines--manual, but they certainly automate the processing of fiber for you. These can be expensive indeed, but process fiber very quickly and are a great choice if you plan to sell the fiber, if you want to start with raw fleece but haven’t the dexterity to do it by hand (and there are electric drum carders as well--otherwise, you are turning a hand crank), or if you want to process high volumes of fiber because you just go through it that fast.

Honorable mentions include flick carding (both cheaper and slower than hand cards--you work with a couple locks at a time and open them up by flicking them with a tined brush), blending boards (these don’t process raw fiber, but they turn already processed fiber into batts--so you can blend many wools very easily for different textures or colors. These are like painting with wool--so fun !), and willowing (I haven’t tried this one yet, but you lay out your wool and repeatedly hit it with willow branches or other bendy sticks, which opens the fiber and also sends it flying all over the place. It looks very fun, and rather slow, and is also free as long as you can find a willow tree).

This website describes some of those methods (and one I didn’t get to) if you’d like to check it out.

Colors to Dye For

Wool takes dye very readily, and you probably come into contact with several natural dye materials every day--onion skins, avocado pit and peel, daffodils, coffee, black tea, thyme, even grass ! You don’t have to be working with fleece to dye it (although dyeing fleece gives you so much color variation and is very fun)--you can also dye roving very easily. Batts, rolags, and top less easily, although it’s possible with a lot of care.

For most natural dyes, you need to collect quite a lot of it, and then let it cook overnight on low heat. Boiling (sometimes even simmering) can kill the color, so you’ve got to be patient. Crock pots on low or medium are great for this. If you can cook it two days, all the better. Let it sit and cool for at least 12 hours, then strain it. (Tip: you can store natural dyes in jars in cool, dark places for at least a year without any ill effects--so you don’t need to use the dye immediately)

The majority of dyes need something called a mordant (I go into more detail about mordants in this post if you’re interested). There are many mordants, but some easy household ones are alum, baking soda (bicarb), copper (put a few bits of copper pipe in a jug of white wine vinegar, let sit for a few weeks at least before using), or iron (same as copper, but with rusty nails. Use a plastic jug !!! Metal will rust and glass can break). Most people mordant their wool by putting it in their dedicated wool pot with some water, adding the mordant, and letting it cook on low for an hour. Then drain the water and add the dye.

Natural dyes need to cook for a while to set--I usually let them cook overnight at least.

For batts, rolags, and top, you can do something called solar dyeing--carefully mordant your wool as usual, then place it in a jar with the dye, and put the dye outside in the sun. Over time (at least a week--often months, especially if you don’t live somewhere warm and sunny) the heat from the sun will warm the water and dye the wool. You could also try storing the jar somewhere you know will be warm, such as near the stove or fireplace.

You don’t have to use natural dyes either--there are also acid dyes, or food coloring, kool-aid (sugar-free), etc. I’m a lot less familiar with those, so I can’t go on at length. They can be a good choice if you don’t have the time for natural dyes, or if you want to get specific colors and not guess what your wool will turn out as. Look into them if you have any interest !

Dyeing your own wool is immensely satisfying, and can be a very cheap (or free, in the case of many natural dyes if you’ve collected or grown them yourself) way of obtaining more color, if you find that you keep ending up with a lot of white wool.

Endless Breeds of Sheep

There are many breeds of sheep on there (not endless, sorry--although there will always be new breeds being developed, so endless in a way !), and they all have different qualities, both in terms of the sheep themselves, and the wool they produce.

Do you want your wool to be very hard wearing ? Down breeds such as Southdown (one of my absolute favorites), Shropshire, or Dorset can be quite durable, and are resistant to felting. You could also go for stronger, coarser wools such as Jacob or Romney--coarser means stronger with wool, and softer tends to mean weaker.

Do you yearn for a softer wool ? Cormo is fantastically soft, as are Rambouillet, Debouillet, and Merino. Many lambswools (meaning the fleece from a lamb--the older a sheep gets, the coarser its wool tends to be) can be softer than their breed standard, so seeking out lambswools even from breeds like Jacob or Rya (both usually strong wools) can lead to soft fleeces.

Of course, there are more considerations than just soft and hard wearing, but there’s pretty much a breed for everything. If you’re interested, “The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook” by Carol Ekarius and Deborah Robson is an incredible resource, and covers just about every breed under the sun (with pictures, samples, notes, recommendations, and interesting bits of history), as well as most non-sheep fiber producing animals as well ! Speaking of...

There’s Not Just Wool

There’s also many non-sheep fibers, and plant fibers too !

Animals with easily usable fiber include: alpaca, llama, angora rabbits, goats, camels, musk ox, and more ! Their properties are usually different from wool--all of the fibers from the animals above have little to no crimp in their fiber, meaning that they aren’t elastic like wool is. They’re also varying degrees of warm (cashmere--the undercoat fibers that come from many different breeds of goats--are extremely warm, but still not as warm as musk ox down), and some are unbelievably soft. If you can, I highly recommend getting a little cashmere, a little camel down, or whatever other exotic fiber strikes your fancy. They’re very fun to experiment with, and small amounts can easily be worked into projects to add warmth, drape, or softness.

We can’t forget about silk, either--produced mainly by certain species of silkworms, although most insects undergoing complete metamorphosis produce silk of varying quality as well. Silk is a very interested fiber to spin--but it can also be reeled instead of spun, which is how you can get extremely thin silk pieces without even needing to spin thread-weight yarn.

But in early human history, before we domesticated sheep and bred them to have better wool than they started out with, we spun things like inner tree bark, flax, nettle, and cotton. These all require very different techniques than wool, but most of them can be spun on the same tools (and all but cotton can be hand twisted into cordage instead, if that’s more up your alley). They are also inherently cooling--fabrics made from linen will keep you very cool indeed--so if you live somewhere hot where having wool objects is mostly pointless, don’t despair ! There’s still stuff for you to spin.

Connect With Others !

I’m about done with this monograph, but there’s a few last things I want to share.

First is the existence of Fiber Festivals--you may or may not have some in your area. They’re extremely fun, and you can meet many spinners there. They’re also usually a very cheap source of fiber, as prices are often a lot lower at festivals.

Second is the existence of Spinning Guilds--again, you may or may not have one locally, but if you do, you might want to join ! There are also spinning clubs and groups, which might be a little lower-key and more welcoming to beginners.

Then there’s TDF, or Tour De Fleece. You may have heard of the biking tournament called Tour de France which happens in July--well, every year a lot of us spinners do a tournament ourselves, but it’s generally not competitive (except on Ravelry--there are teams and points and everything). For the most part, participating in TDF just means setting a spinning goal for yourself from July 1st to July 23rd (the end of the race) and then trying to achieve it. For a lot of people, this means spinning every day. Some set goals like “get through this whole fleece I bought 10 years ago” or “spin a sweater’s worth of yarn” or “learn how to spin flax, finally” (that’s what I did last year). Or maybe it is just spinning every day--even if just for 20 minutes. On tumblr you can see other’s work and post your own under the tag #TourDeFleece2023, or #TDF2023 (there’s many variants as well)--we’d love to have you !

Lastly, there’s International Spin In Public Day ! To be honest, nobody can really agree on what day that is--allegedly, it’s the 3rd Saturday of September. (For me, it’s literally every day that I leave my house, but I digress). But I’ve also seen posters for October, for September 10th or earlier, and just generally lots of different dates. I’d say play it safe--if you see someone say it’s International Spin in Public Day, go spin in public just in case :D. The purpose of a day like this is to bring spinning back into public knowledge--let’s face it, most people in the western world have zero clue how yarn is made, and couldn’t differentiate a spindle from a spatula. This sucks ! Spinning is such a great activity--it can be meditative, calming, fun, exciting, or a background motion to other activities that allows you to actually pay attention (if you have ADHD). And I think a lot more people would spin, and would enjoy it, if only they were exposed to the idea. You certainly don’t have to act as Spinning’s public outreach officer, or anything like that... but when people ask what you’re doing, explaining it patiently and encouraging them to look into it does everyone a favor.

In Conclusion

I hope this has been helpful and not too confusing ! It’s really important to note that I’m just one guy--I don’t know everything, and I might not always have the best techniques. Looking for information on spinning from multiple sources is a good way to get a well-rounded understanding, and to correct common misconceptions that you might have already learned. Perhaps more importantly, there’s pretty much an infinite number of ways to do almost every single step I’ve described here, and if the way I showed you--or the video I linked to showed you--isn’t working, don’t despair ! There’s nothing wrong with you, you probably just need to do it a different way. I must have watched 3 dozen videos of people drop spindling before it finally clicked with me.

I hope I’ve opened up the world of spinning to you at least somewhat ! There are many things I didn’t touch on, and lots of stuff I wish I could talk more about, but at the end of the day I mostly wanted to 1) show you how to make yarn and 2) pique your curiosity about the whole rest of it. If you have questions, I’ll try to answer them (Purple, I will of course answer all your questions and also attempt to mind read your questions before you’ve even asked them so that I have a 10 million slide power point done by the time the question is out of your mouth), but check the comments and replies first ! Someone else might have answered it already.

Thanks for reading, and happy spinning !

Fig J: The author holding his old drop spindle, spinning at a doctor’s appointment. The spindle now belongs to the friend for which this monstrosity of a tutorial was written ! :D

[shenenenigans]

i know this dream of life is never ending.

I knew I didn’t have much time. I tried so hard. But this was all according to plan. I had to believe. I had to endure. No matter what he would do to me, I had to endure. I was counting on it.

[SUBJECT 020798 found in unauthorized area. Please locate them immediately.]

It had to work. I had to leave, I had to get out. I had to be fixed.

it goes around and round and round again.

All I needed was to trust myself, and everything would be okay. My life would continue. I won’t die. I can’t die, not now.

you know the sun is rising while descending.

I thought I heard footsteps. Maybe I was hallucinating. I felt like I was going insane, after all. Maybe it was just my imagination. At least I knew I was still alive. I would see everyone again, and it would be just fine. It has to work. It will work.

it goes on and on and never ends.

[SUBJECT 020798 has been located. Please transfer their body to another location.]

I will return. No matter what it takes.

[SUBJECT 020798 will perish shortly. Please send cleaning staff to their area immediately.]

Everyone is fucking wrong about me.

[meteorologears]

incomplete and oversimplified thoughts on catch 22 relationships after doing my umpteenth book reread

[articalextraordinaire]

hey ninjago fandom, im back so have some art before i go back into my hidey hole

so i did not do zane justice, so heres a lil bonus

[spacedykez]

he's ✨glowy✨

[skenpiel]

homestuck fans when theres no rhyme or reason to the trickster designs and its literally just a jumbled mess of hideous colors and vague candy themes which means theres no consistency to analyze to help with making fan designs

[clamorybus]

im so fucking tired of how my local news talks about palestine vs how it talks about ukraine

[3motionally3xhausted]

Listen Guys..

I've had these designs cooking for ages now (Undergrowth was my nemesis) for an AU/jumble of multiple AUs that sprung up from a larger analysis of the Ghost Zone's more powerful ghosts. The thing is... since Ive had these designs sitting for a minute, Im not happy with several of them anymore :((

So... I don't really feel like explaining my whole analysis + apprenticeship AU, BUT I also didn't want to let these just sit and rot on my computer.

(Now these are sorta top-to-bottom my favorites of the designs but not really & hopefully it's obvious which ghosts each one is based on. or check my tags, they're in order)

And now... my UNDERGROWTH Danny...... I struggled. On the left, I got all the way to competing the character page before realizing I hated it, decided I had to go back to the drawing board, then the final that I landed on.

Also, I think I should say the one with the purple cloak and green wings is based on the Ancients bc its the only I feel isn't obvious enough.

[1dalmatianeveryday]

7.27.23 | Reference

[gibbearish]

i know ppl talk abt how good griffins music is but goddamn

[beenbaanbuun]

opposites attract w/ addams!matz

it’s finally here… i spent so long on this and im finally happy enough with it to give it to you guys!! i hope you enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it <333

words - 7.2k

genre - smut/fluff

warnings - sugar mommy!seonghwa, mommy kink, sugar daddy!hongjoong, daddy kink, cute!reader, sub!reader, dom!seonghwa, switch!hongjoong, unprotected sex, creampie, double penetration (2 in 1), clit play, cum eating, collaring, partially clothed sex, seonghwa in a tulle robe, mentions of seonghwa in a dress, i’m so horny for seonghwa guys, mentions of drinking but everyone is sober, pet names (mommy, daddy, mi amor, cara mia, dove, love, lamb), i think that’s it?

——————————————————————————

The fire crackles to your left as you lay before it for warmth. The grizzly bear rug - which you’d affectionately nicknamed Jongho, once you’d finally gotten used to the morbid thing - is soft beneath you, and you have to stop yourself from slipping away into a peaceful slumber atop it.

Although you assume your desire to sleep has more to do with the book in your hand than it does the rug. It had been carefully placed atop the side table next to the chez and since you had nothing better to do, you decided to read it. Only it seems it was written when Shakespeare’s great-great-great grandfather was still a twinkle in his father's eye, so comprehending a single word of it is proving to be more difficult than you originally anticipated. For all you know, you could be reading a recipe book and you’d be none-the-wiser.

For that exact reason, it doesn't take long for you to slam the book closed in frustration, tossing it to the side. It boinks the back of Jongho’s head, bouncing off and landing somewhere on the parquet floor. You can’t be particularly bothered to check where it’s landed, knowing that if you do, you’ll be liable to clean up after your mini-tantrum. The longer the location of the book remains a mystery, the longer you can stay swaddled in the blanket of warmth that Jongho and the fire are providing you with.

“Little dove?” A voice calls from the doorway to the sitting room. Your head perks up and you glance over to where Hongjoong is leaning against the stone archway with a glass of whisky in hand. You smile at him, which he returns, “I didn’t even notice you were here. When did you arrive?”

He takes a few steps into the room before coming to a halt upon spotting your body that had previously been hidden by the chez lounge. You’re lying on your tummy, head in hands and feet kicked up in the air. It’s quite obvious you’re not trying to seduce him with the way you're staring up at him with innocent eyes. In fact, once he spots the book tossed a couple of feet away, he can tell that your behaviour is more on par with a petulant child than a seductress. If it weren’t for your outfit, he’d perhaps find you adorable, but that’s the last word he’d use to describe that tiny little tennis skirt you’re wearing.

The hem had flicked up at some point, revealing just a little more thigh than you realise. If Hongjoong looks carefully he’s almost sure he can see the crease of where your ass cheek meets your thigh. He averts his gaze, if only to stop himself from pouncing on you and instead, he lets it travel down your soft legs. His eyes don’t get far, however, as seconds later his pupils come to rest on the thigh-highs you wear. The way they dig into your thighs so prettily, your soft flesh spilling over the top, draws him in.

He gulps down the rest of his whisky to calm himself.

“About fifteen minutes ago,” you shrug before laying yourself completely flat against the bear you seem to adore so much. Your fingers curl into its fur and you stretch your legs out behind you. Hongjoong almost finds you cute, but the way you move only brings more attention to your thighs. He notices the purple marks that had been left between them only days prior have faded, for the most part, although the memory alone makes his cock throb, and he quickly manoeuvres himself so he’s sitting on the chez with one leg firmly over the other to hide the growing tent in his black, pinstripe slacks.

“Why didn’t you call for us, my dove?” He places his empty glass down on the side table, the cubes of ice clinking musically against the sides, “you know we would’ve come running to you.”

You flip onto your back, rolling just a touch closer to Hongjoong’s feet. A shiver runs through you as the cold patch of Jongho’s fur rubs against your skin, and you almost want to shuffle back to the patch you’d already spent the last quarter of an hour warming up with your body. You refrain. It’s nice to be close to Hongjoong, and besides, you can get a better look at him from this angle. Always so handsome, every single pore in his body oozing eloquence and grace. If you ever get to meet the demon who created such a tempting individual, you’d have to thank them personally.

Hongjoong feels the same way, desire and temptation filling him from top to bottom as you reveal the front of your outfit. The corseted top you wear hugs your breasts oh so perfectly, accentuating them in a way that would have a Victorian harlot gasping with jealousy. If you were, in fact, a harlot, Hongjoong would be willing to pay whatever it took for just a peek at your body.

“Seonghwa doesn’t like it when I don’t use my indoor voice,” you mumble through pouted lips. The way they pucker reminds him of all the pretty little sounds you let slip through them when he and Seonghwa are taking you apart. They play a symphony in his head, dizzying him as he further succumbs to your temptations.

“You should’ve come to seek us out then,” his voice is a little gravellier than it had been just a moment or two ago, his desire to ruin you only growing stronger by the second, “You know, rather than just lying here and waiting for us to stumble upon your little tantrum.” he gestures over to where the book still lays discarded on the ground.

You roll your eyes and let out a grunt of dismay.

“It’s not a tantrum,” you whine childishly, “I’m just bored, and that book was dumb.”

He hums as he watches you sulk with your face pressed up to the rug. You’re incredibly charming, actually, and all he wants to do is reach down and pull you into his lap. Perhaps whisper comfort to you as he toys with you a little. Turn you into a gooey mess, both mind and body. He pushes those thoughts away, yet the way you look at him draws them back. You’re the picture of innocence with glistening eyes, body spread out on his rug as if you’re too dumb to care about the amount of skin showing. Perhaps you are; it doesn’t seem like you’ve even noticed that your skirt has now lifted enough for him to see the front of your white cotton panties.

He wants to tear you to shreds.

“Bored, hm?” he grunts out through gritted teeth. His hard cock is aching at this point. It’s a white-hot ache that sits deep in his balls. He can feel that they desire nothing more than to be emptied into you.

“Bored and restless,” you sigh as you let your fingers intertwine with Jongho’s fur.

Hongjoong hums in understanding, a grin rising to his face as you so graciously drop all the answers to his problems in his lap. He almost gets down onto the floor himself to kiss you, but somehow manages to hold himself back.

“I have an idea, little dove,” he says. “How about you go upstairs and see Mommy?”

And just like that, time seems to stop. The suggestion brings all of your attention to Hongjoong who is staring you down like a lion on the prowl. There’s a dangerous smirk on his lips, the man baring his teeth as if he’s about to go in for the kill. You gulp as you push yourself into a sitting position, feeling every part ‘prey’ as he seems predator.

“You think it’ll help?” you take in a sharp breath, “i-if I go and see… Mommy?”

“Of course, I do, little dove” he leans in close and grabs hold of your chin between his fingers. His fingers are a little cold to the touch, which sends a shudder through your body. The reaction you have makes him chuckle, “Now be a good girl and run along, won’t you? Daddy won’t be far behind.”

The second his grip loosens on your face, you’re scrambling to your feet and rushing out of the room. Your socks almost make you slip on the lacquered parquet. Hongjoong chuckles as you balance yourself before disappearing into the stairwell. You take the stairs two at a time, footsteps thundering through the house. There's no doubt in your mind that Seonghwa will give you a lecture about your volume the moment he spots you, but that’s at the back of your mind right now. All you can think about is what’s to come.

You step foot on the landing, practically skipping down the hallway until you reach the open doorway to an all-too-familiar room. You knock desperately, not bothering to wait for a response before pushing it open and stumbling inside of the master bedroom.

Immediately your eyes hone in on Seonghwa, lying on the bed in all his glory, nothing but a black tulle robe to cover his lithe body. His wet hair hangs over his forehead in elegant waves, dripping droplets of water down his nose as he relaxes. Despite your desire to have him take you in any way he deems fit, you can’t help but stop for a second to admire the view.

“I thought I heard you coming,” his silken voice beckons you in like a siren. You follow it, stepping closer to your doom with every step, “although it wasn’t difficult. I’d be surprised if the people living four towns over couldn’t hear you.”

He locks eyes with you, dark pupils drawing you even further in. You shuffle toward him until you’re standing by his nightstand. A pretty hand reaches out to rest upon your waist, fingers dancing across the pastel material of your corset. Seonghwa reaches around the back to where the ribbon holds it in place and gives it a playful tug.

“I was just excited to see you,” you defend as he continues to play with the bow at the base of your spine, “Daddy sent me.”

The fingers pause for a millisecond before going back to what they were doing. They pull at the ribbon, tempting it looser and looser the longer they play. You have no doubt the bow will slip open any time now.

You can’t find it in you to care.

“And why did Daddy send you to me?” His lips are pretty as he talks, plush and pouty with a natural red tint to them. He looks vampiric; black eyes, glassy skin, crimson lips. You move closer still until the mattress presses firmly against your thighs, “were you misbehaving?”

You shake your head at the suggestion. Bar the book, which Hongjoong wasn’t even there to witness you throw, you’d been nothing but a good girl. Perhaps a little disrespectful at times, but nothing Hongjoong couldn’t have handled quickly and efficiently by himself.

“No?” Seonghwa tugs you onto the bed as he speaks. The hand that rests on your body works hard to rearrange you until you’re straddling him prettily. He admires the way your tiny little skirt bunches up at the top of your thighs, revealing the wet patch at the front of your panties. His eyes can hardly tear themselves away, and his dick begins to stir beneath the translucent fabric of his robe, “perhaps he just thinks a good fucking is what you need, my lamb. Is that it? Do you need your Mommy to help look after you, hm?”

This time you nod. You’d love nothing more than for Seonghwa to take care of you - he always does it so well. So slow that you can’t help but become dizzy with desperation; so soft that you can’t help but feel like a precious artefact being studied under Seonghwa’s watchful gaze; so loving that you feel nothing but safe in his grasp, able to turn off your mind and just enjoy him.

Seonghwa.

And upon that revelation, the man finally lets the bow slip open. Your corset loosens, gaping a little at the top. Your tits help to hold it up, but as Seonghwa begins to work on loosening the ribbon, you feel it start to slip away.

“Arms up,” he says as he grabs the material. You do as he asks, and he wastes no time in setting your top half free. You know better than to try and hide yourself from him, so when you lower your arms once more they remain glued to your sides - just as Seonghwa’s eyes remain glued to your chest. “Pretty little lamb,” he whispers, his face remaining stoic but his words soft. You can tell he means them.

“Do you want to take your skirt off too?” You nod, “Go ahead then, lamb; mommy can't do everything for you.” And whilst you’re under the impression that Seonghwa can - and mostly does - do everything for you, you obey. Slipping off of his lap, your hands work on the zipper, easing it down until the skirt can no longer stay up. Without so much of a touch from you, it slips down your thighs, exposing your white panties completely. You remove the skirt the rest of the way, throwing it on top of your corset to create a messy little pile of clothes upon Hongjoong’s pillow.

You look to Seonghwa for further guidance, your restless mind seems to enjoy being told what to do. It craves the softness that you so often get from him. The gentle touch and the gentle words that soothe you. The strict instructions that stop you from having to think for yourself, Seonghwa and Hongjoong - Mommy and Daddy - taking care of you entirely. It’s exactly what you need right now.

“My darling lamb,” Seonghwa whispers as he holds his arms out for you. You shuffle forward slightly, allowing him to tug you into a horizontal embrace, “Whilst I do love you in the family colours,” you know he means black - he and Hongjoong so often dress you up in expensive black lingerie before a night of intimacy. they love making you ‘theirs’ in any way possible, and wearing the ‘family colour’ is just another way to do that, “I must admit that the way your pretty pussy slicks up these dainty white panties is a lovely sight.”

His hands work together, arranging your body in his grasp until you’re lying just perfect for him. Your head sits in the crook of one elbow, leaving his hand free to play with your hair. The other arm lays on the soft flesh of your tummy. You relax into his touch, despite the fact that his hand is already beginning to move south. Still, he makes every movement so intentional that when his fingers do eventually reach the wet patch on your panties, it only makes you relax even further into him.

“So wet, lamb,” he murmurs into your ear, “who caused this?”

Obviously, he knows the answer, but he can’t help but take the opportunity to tease you. To see you squirm under his gaze as he waits for your answer is so entertaining to him. He knows it’s even more entertaining when you begin to stutter as pleasure wracks through your body; he begins to draw lazy circles against your clothed clit.

“Y-you and daddy,” you reply, voice breathy as Seonghwa increases the pressure on your sensitive bud, “you a-always make me so wet, Mommy…”

He chuckles as he feels your hips twitch against his fingers. You want more, and whilst normally Seonghwa would have you wait for it, teasing you until he’s decided you're ready for it, he can’t help but want to indulge you in your desires now. You're so good for him, he thinks to himself as he changes the pace a little. As your face screws up in pleasure, a smile rises to his own.

He continues at that pace, gauging how you're feeling by your facial expressions and the pretty sounds you make. When you bite your lip or furrow your brow, he knows you want more and so he adds more pressure until your mouth gapes wide and little high-pitched moans come from the back of your throat. That's how he knows you're happy. That is what he always aims to achieve because his pleasure, and Hongjoong’s for that matter, often comes from yours. Making the sweet little creature that they’d so lovingly taken under their wing happy is all they truly desire.

And you are, happy that is; falling apart under Seonghwa’s gentle touch will always be where you’re happiest. It's even better when he finally slips your panties to the side and puts his warm, delicate fingers directly onto your clit. You let out a heavy sigh as he spreads your lips with his index and ring finger, giving his middle finger an open pathway to the little button that is practically throbbing with the need to be played with again. And when he touches it, this time directly, it's even more electric than it was before. A bolt of pleasure shoots through you and you struggle to pin yourself to the bed. Your spine arches as you let out a loud whine. Fuck, it feels so good, and he’s barely even touched you yet.

Seonghwa begins to rub circles again, only this time without any barrier to dull the sensation. Magical, is the only word that you can use to describe the way it feels, each tender touch sending shocks of lightning through your body. It's like you don't have control over it as your hips buck against his hand, socked feet desperately rubbing against one another as it will do anything to help you ground yourself. Nothing can help now, not when Seonghwa has you feeling so high with just a few simple touches.

It doesn't take long until you feel it building up inside of you, racing to the top of that peak quicker than you can comprehend. You can feel your hole clenching around thin air, desperately trying to grip onto nothing. Perhaps Weonghwa would finger your next, preparing you for whatever is yet to come. You think you’d like nothing more than to be spread open with his lithe fingers, and it's that thought that finally pushes you over the ledge.

Your orgasm hits as the door swings even further open and Hongjoong walks in just in time to see you squirming under Seonghwa’s touch. He smirks at the sight of his darling husband taking such wonderful care of their little love, caressing your hair as he guides you through the intense feeling that is flowing through your body so rampantly. His fingers slow to a stop at just the right second, leaving you a panting mess in his arms.

“What a time to arrive,” Hongjoong says, voice clear as a bell as he makes his presence known. Seonghwa, of course, noticed him the second he walked in; the pair always did seem to have this weird, almost telepathic thing going on. They told you it was just true love at work, which was something you wholeheartedly believed, “It always is such a beautiful sight to see you cum, my dove. I could watch it forever and never get bored.”

Seonghwa hums out a chuckle at that, “Now isn't that a novel idea, lamb!” He presses a kiss to your temple, “Perhaps we’ll have to do that one day; a full day of making you cum over and over and over again”

“Maybe, Mommy,” is all you can spit out in response to their teasing, nodding along as if you're not dreading the idea of a whole day of overstimulation. The two men smile at your eagerness to please despite your obvious displeasure. Perhaps they’d suggest it again when you aren’t as lust-drunk as you seem to be now. Their only goal at this moment is to satiate you, not fulfil their own fantasies. They could wait a little while to put those into play.

Hongjoong shrugs off his jacket before clambering onto the bed, effectively trapping you between the two of them. Just like Seonghwa, he takes a moment to play with the hair that frames your face. He twists a strand between two fingers before tucking it behind your ear. Upon closer inspection, he can't help but notice the H pendant that dangles from your lobe. He wonders if Seonghwa has noticed the matching S sitting in your other ear, yet. It always does make the tall man so happy to see you wearing one of the many gifts they shower you in.

“I have something for you,” Hongjoong says, the earrings acting as a reminder of the box he’s had stored in the drawer of his nightstand for what seems like forever, now. They had been waiting for the right moment to present it to you, but right now seems as ‘right’ as any, “would you like to see it?”

You watch as he leans over to pull open his drawer, fetching a black oblong box from its confines. The box itself is nothing of note, but he passes it to you with such care, and you just know that whatever is inside of it is special. Your eyes meet with his, asking for permission to open it. He gives you a single nod in return.

You slip the lid off of the box.

“Oh,” you whisper as you lay eyes on what appears to be a collar of some sort. A thin velvet band that locks with a clasp at the back and finishes with a delicate bow at the front. Intricate lace frills surround the velvet, giving the collar more volume, yet keeping its soft appearance. A pastel pink pearl drips from a tiny metal ring that sits at the centre of the bow. Behind it is a petite chrome plate embossed with the letters ‘H&S’ in a fanciful font. It's beautiful, and you can't help but tell them that.

“You like it?” Seonghwa asked, tilting your chin up so you were looking him in the eyes. With the most genuine smile you can muster, you nod, “I’m glad.”

You feel Hongjoong close in beside you. He reaches an arm over your body to pick the collar up with a gentle hand. The velvet shifts in the dim light that shines from the chandelier above, and it changes colour right before your eyes, from black to a beautiful shade of magenta. You seem to recall Seonghwa wearing a similar dress once upon a time. It was black, just like your collar, but whenever he moved, the fabric rippled and in doing so, caused it to shift into a deep crimson. He and Hongjoong had waltzed together that night. It's nothing out of the ordinary for them, but that night sticks out to you specifically because of the sheer beauty of Seonghwa's dress.

“We wanted to give you something to remind you that you are ours,” Hongjoong tells you, voice as soft as the velvet on the collar, “because you are. From the moment we saw you, we knew you were ours. From now until forever, dove.”

And with that, he presses the fabric to your throat, dragging his fingers along it until they reach the clasp at the back. He fastens it, fingers lingering for a moment before pulling away empty-handed. You struggle to hide your smile as your mind fumbles over itself, repeating ‘theirs, theirs, theirs,’ over and over as if the fabric pressing into your jugular wasn't enough of a reminder of that fact.

With your newfound sense of belonging that you hadn't even realised you were missing, you find it easy to lean forward and take what is rightfully yours. Your eyes flutter closed as you steal a kiss from Seonghwa. Upon feeling your lips bump against his, lacking the grace or elegance he was used to when initiating kisses himself, he can't help but let out a surprised squeak. He soon finds his feet, though, taking control back in a matter of seconds and pushing you back against Hongjoong’s solid body. The clothed chest acts as a support for Seonghwa as he wraps a hand around your throat, softly stroking the jewellery as he deepens the kiss.

A tongue slips between your lips as a hand slips beneath the waistband of your panties. You struggle to focus on the way Seonghwa licks into your mouth when Hongjoong tugs the white fabric down your thighs, fully exposing you while the two men remain at least somewhat covered. You shift your legs slightly to aid him in his mission of removing them fully, never once pulling away from Seonghwa. You might’ve mentally praised yourself for multitasking if it weren't for Seonghwa shifting his body slightly, hard dick now pressing against your lower stomach through the tulle of his robe. Just one flick of the wrist and it would be fully exposed, ready to slip inside of you.

You moan into Seonghwa’s mouth.

He pulls away, panting desperately as he regains breath.

“Hell above, lamb,” Seonghwa utters, adams apple bobbing as he exclaims, “You really are a most devilish creature under that innocent exterior, aren't you? Pouncing on me like a little bear cub, hm?”

You go to answer, a touch of snarkiness on the tip of your tongue. Barely a sound leaves your lips, though, as a finger presses into your core and your words turn into a long, drawn-out whine. The finger bottoms out pretty soon, and that's how you can tell it’s Hongjoong’s; shorter than Seonghwa’s by a mile, yet ever so slightly thicker. As he adds a second almost immediately, you can't help but moan at the stretch.

“Fuck, Daddy,” you keen. Your head tips forward, landing with a heavy thud against the exposed part of Seonghwa’s chest, “your fingers feel so good.” He curls them inside of you, tempting a tiny squark from your lips. Then he does it again, routinely twisting them as he pumps them in and out. The sound they make as they swim amongst your gooey wetness is quite frankly obscene, but you find it hard to feel humiliated when so much pleasure flows through you.

Then you feel a second pair of fingers line up against your core, bullying their way in alongside Hongjoong’s. The stretch makes you choke on your spit, gurgling slightly as the longer pair brush against the squishy membrane of your g-spot. Like Hongjoong had moments before, Seonghwa begins to curve them slightly, petting your walls as his husband continues thrusting in and out.

The stretch is immense, almost reaching the familiar girth of Seonghwa’s cock. Like his fingers, it was long and whilst not necessarily thin, it didn't quite match up to the girth of Hongjoong’s. For that reason, you usually take Seonghwa first, but as you feel yet another finger press into your core, you can't help but wonder whether they’re prepping you to take Hongjoong first instead.

The fingers work together to open you up, spreading you wider than usual. You don't complain, letting them do whatever they choose with your body while you lay there limp and ready for them to take in whatever way they deem fit. They know your body well enough for you to give them full control. You trust them with yourself fully.

Hongjoong slips his three fingers out, and before long you can hear slurping above your head. Seonghwa’s fingers stutter within you, and you can’t help but feel a little curious. You flick your gaze to Seonghwa’s face, jaw dropping upon seeing his lips wrapped around Hongjoong’s digits, licking them clean of your juices. His eyelashes flutter gracefully against his porcelain-smooth cheeks, and even with his husband's fingers down his throat you can’t help but think he’s beautiful.

Hongjoong pulls them loose with a pop and dries the mixture of your juices and Seonghwa’s spit against his suit pants before he unzips them, his cock springing free almost immediately. It’s angry and red with precum flowing freely from the tip as if it’s about to explode if it doesn’t get something soon. You reach an arm out to touch it, but Hongjoong darts a hand out to catch it.

He tuts.

“Patience, little dove,” he whispers with a smirk, “Mommy may have let you take what you want, but I still expect you to do as I say.”

He wastes no time in shifting down the bed, gracefully moving until the head of his cock is lined up with your core. You half expect Seonghwa to pull his fingers free, but he doesn't. Hongjoong’s blunt head presses into your still-stuffed hole, only just breaching the pink rim. It's a painful stretch with Seonghwa’s fingers still inside of you, but Hongjoong goes slow, allowing your cunt to accommodate him at its own pace. With Seonghwa still petting that one spot, you find it fairly easy to let pleasure take over, the pain becoming more and more bearable until it fades into nothing.

It feels like it takes an age for Hongjoong to bottom out. Despite his cock not being tremendously long - perhaps even a little shorter than average - it seems to go on forever as he pushes it into you. The delicious stretch combined with the constant assault on your g-spot sends you hurtling towards another orgasm. All it takes is for Hongjoong’s pelvis to finally come to a standstill against yours, his thick cock fully sheathed within your warm, wet cavern, and you're coming undone. Your walls tighten around him, pressing Seonghwa’s fingers up against the shaft of Hongjoong’s cock. The latter bows his head and lets his jaw go slack. A guttural moan falls from his throat as he tries his hardest not to cum on the spot.

“My darling lamb,” Seonghwa chuckles into your ear as he slows his fingers to a stop. You're grateful for the break in stimulation, although you know it isn't bound to last, “you’re so sensitive tonight. It makes me wonder how you might react when I’m inside of you too. I bet you’d like that, yes? Mommy and daddy inside of you at the same time?”

You nod, although you don't quite let the true meaning of his words sink in. All you know is that you want them both, so incredibly bad. Your passionate, commanding Hongjoong hand in hand with your caring yet fiercely protective Seonghwa; they’d keep you with them forever if you let them. You’d live in their macabre bubble, surrounded by their morbid warmth and ghastly traditions. Your days would be filled with them; Hongjoong could teach you to fence or play chess, and Seonghwa would no doubt teach you about all the deadly plants he keeps in his greenhouse. You’d spend your evenings watching them Waltz in front of the fireplace, a funeral march playing from their old megaphone. Perhaps you’d join them from time to time, pressed to Hongjoong’s front as Seonghwa directs your movements from the chez.

And once the evening activities have drawn to a close, they’d drag you upstairs to bed to take you apart piece by piece. Each night they would push you to the edge of sanity before slowly bringing you back down to earth. They’d treat you like the most precious thing on the planet; a ruby to be polished and protected.

You want it more than anything. Seonghwa and Hongjoong - mommy and daddy - forever and always.

“Want you, Mommy,” you whisper, choking on your own words as Hongjoong begins to pull out slowly until only the tip is left sitting within your velvety walls. You cry out as his hips snap forward, propelling his entire length into you once more. It feels so good, and Seonghwa takes the hint to begin moving his fingers once more. It drives you insane. Chants of ‘please, please,’ fill the air, although you aren't quite sure what you’re begging for.

Seonghwa looks to Hongjoong, who lifts his head to see the silent question on his lover's face.

“One more, Cara Mia,” he grunts out as he pistons his hips into you, “she’s so tight.”

“Of course, Mi Amor,” Seonghwa hums and a mere few seconds pass by before you feel a third finger press against your entrance. You squirm as he pushes it inside of you, wriggling its way inside beside Hongjoong’s cock and his other two fingers. It's a snug fit, but you find it much easier to get used to than the initially painful stretch of Hongjoong’s member.

And even with the third finger added, they do much of the same, Seonghwa gently massaging your walls as Hongjoong pounds into you. The force of his hips increases with each thrust, making your mind go hazy. It's only made worse when Seonghwa begins to spread his fingers within you, making you squeal. His hand that still rests behind your head quickly comes to sit upon your fluffed-up barnet, petting it soothingly as he stretches you out even further.

You're babbling nonsense at this point, but neither man pays it any mind as they work you open past what you thought to be your limit. They're encouraged by the tiny pleas, keeping up their pace as you’re faced with a third orgasm. Perhaps that was what Seonghwa was waiting for because as he feels your walls tighten around his fingers, he begins to slip them out. You whine at the loss, even though Hongjoong is still working hard to fuck you through your orgasm, whilst somehow still staving his own off. Seonghwa just hushes you with a small peck to the lips.

He puts a hand on your shoulder, shifting you and Hongjoong ever so slightly. Just enough so he can slip behind you, his warm chest pressing up against your spine. For a moment, you wonder what he's doing, but then the chiffon of his robe moves to expose his cock and you’re struck by a sudden realisation of what both at the same time actually means.

That would explain why they were so determined to stretch you out…

Hongjoong’s hips slow to a stop with his member still deep inside of you as you feel the head of Seonghwa’s brush against your entrance. You moan as he forces the tip in with only a small amount of resistance from your stretched-out pussy. The unpleasant burn of being opened up is there again, but you bite your lip and let Seonghwa push himself into you alongside Hongjoong. You know the pain will dissipate soon, having already experienced it once with Hongjoong just a short while prior, but holy fuck does it hurt right now.

A helpful finger - although, in your dizzy state you can't quite work out who’s it is - finds its way to your clit, rubbing firm yet somehow also delicate circles on the little bundle of nerves. As you focus on the pleasure you get from that, it’s fairly easy to forget about the unpleasant ache between your thighs, and within minutes you’re once more able to relax into the ministrations of the men.

You whimper as the taller man bottoms out much quicker than Hongjoong did; perhaps he was just desperate from having to watch his husband fuck you for a while first. His tip gently brushes against your cervix, pulling a gasp from your lips as you feel him grazing against the sensitive muscle. He shushes you in your ear as he slowly begins to move. His thrusts are lazier than Hongjoong’s, slower and gentler just as they always are. It suits him; he always had been more restrained and patient than his shorter counterpart who is also beginning to thrust into you once more.

The contrast between the way the two men treat your body, as well as the determined finger upon your button, is enough to drive you crazy. You’re left as nothing but a moaning mess between them, squirming as they fuck into you at different paces; Seonghwa slow and gentle and Hongjoong quick and animalistic. You’re putty in their hands at this point, purely there for them to use and pump full of cum.

It doesn't take long for Hongjoong to do just that.

“I’m close, my dove,” he groans into your ear, “your precious cunt is squeezing me so tight; I can't hold on any longer.”

Mere moments later, his hips stutter to a stop, his dick still deep inside of you. You know exactly what’s coming, but it still doesn’t stop you from moaning as you feel the thick, warm liquid fill you to the brim. Seonghwa only fucks it deeper, forcing the feeling of fullness upon you. You expect it to vanish any minute; Hongjoong will pull out and the cum will flow out with him.

He doesn’t, though; more accurately, Seonghwa doesn’t let him.

Just as you feel Hongjoong begin to retract his softening cock, the hand that lies against your pubis, fingers dancing upon your clit, shoots out to catch his hip. He whines, more pathetic than you’ve ever heard him before; it’s a beautiful sound, and you can’t help but clench around them when you hear it.

“Cara mia, please,” he whimpers, jaw opening wide in a silent moan as Seonghwa continues to thrust into you, cock rubbing repeatedly against Hongjoong’s own oversensitive member, “it’s too much.”

You’ve never seen him so submissive before, and you have to admit you find it hotter than you feel you should. The two of you moan out in unison, the combination of Seonghwa’s languid movements combined with the control he has over the both of you is enough to send you spiralling to the end. You can feel it coming, but with the lack of stimulation on your clit, you can’t quite get there. You open your mouth to protest, but then Seonghwa’s tip pushes through the milky cum to brush against your cervix, and your mind is once again empty.

“But you can take it, Mi Amor,'' Seonghwa taunts from behind you, voice low and velvety in your ear. In a last-ditch attempt to keep any semblance of your sanity, you let your hands shoot out to grab at Hongjoong’s black shirt. It’s damp with sweat beneath your hands, but as you squeeze the soft material between your fingers, you can’t find it in you to care. “You can take it so our little lamb can feel good; keep her stuffed full until her Mommy can cum inside of her too.”

Hongjoong nods wordlessly, too focused on panting his way through the overstimulation to form any words. Through hooded eyes you watch his face contort with pained pleasure, eyes squeezing shut and brow furrowing as your fluttering walls and Seonghwa’s twitching cock torture his sensitive shaft. He looks so beautiful, and while you know you’ll probably never have the chance to overpower him in such a manner, you're happy you can at least bear witness to it now.

And with the knowledge that Hongjoong will behave, Seonghwa moves his fingers back to your clit. They dive straight in, tweaking the throbbing bud in a way that draws a loud cry of pleasure from your lips. Your walls tighten around both men’s members; an action which has them simultaneously moaning in your ears. Knowing just how much of an effect you have on the two men encourages you to constrict them within your walls again.

It must feel good since that's all it takes to have Seonghwa come to a standstill inside of you, ropes of his cum emptying into your womb and mixing with Hongjoong’s. It's beautifully warm as it shoots up against your cervix. That alone is enough to have you clenching down on them once more.

Seonghwa grunts as you milk him dry, and the moment he's finished spilling his load inside of you, he taps Hongjoong’s hip to get him to pull out of you. Perhaps it's that - the final drag of their dicks against your walls - that pushes you careening off the edge into your final orgasm of the night. Your entire body tightens as your vision turns white for just a moment. You can feel your back arch and your hips buck as Seonghwa continues to toy with your clit, but it's like your mind is separate from your body, unable to control anything that it does in response to the mind-blowing climax.

He takes his fingers away at just the right moment, not wanting to push you any further than you already have been tonight.

Still, it takes a moment or two for you to come back down to earth, the remnants of the orgasm sending endorphins racing through your body as you try to catch your breath. It seems the men on either side of you are in the same boat, heavy breathing the only sound you can hear. It's pleasant to feel their chests rising and falling against you, but the comfort you gain from it doesn't take away from just how empty you feel now.

And perhaps it's that or the sudden crash of adrenaline that makes your throat tighten and tears begin to build up upon your lash line. The first one falls, pretty quickly, but it doesn't get very far as Hongjoong kisses it away. His lips linger against your face, relishing the way your hot skin feels against them.

“Why are you crying, my lamb?” Seonghwa whispers against your ear. His fingers lift up to brush against your face, swiping away another stray tear, “are you that happy?”

“Empty,” you correct, voice stuffy as you allow yourself to cry, “but, I guess happy too. How could I not be when I’m with you two?”

They both hum in amusement as they crowd you with their bodies. You’re stuffed between them; the weird pastel meat in an equally weird gothic sandwich, and you wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Not when you know now that you’re theirs, and they’re yours - the tag of the collar that dangles against your throat reminds you of that fact. You pick it up between your fingers, toying with the cold metal.

“I can’t do anything about you feeling empty, I’m afraid,” Seonghwa says, “but I’m certainly pleased you’re happy, my little lamb.”

“You could stuff me back up?” You say, only half in jest. Hongjoong scoffs and shakes his head in a desperate refusal; clearly, he’s still too sensitive.

Part of you wants to take advantage of that and tease him a little. It would be so easy to shuffle and ‘accidentally’ brush your thigh against his cock. If you’re careful, you’ll definitely be able to avoid suspicion, and if you get caught you doubt you’ll get much more than a warning. Still, as you look upon his face and see nothing but adoration, the thoughts seem to vanish into thin air.

You let go of your collar, pressing the hand against his cheek instead and use it to hold him in place as you peck the tip of his nose. The metal of the collar clinks as he scrunches his nose up in mock dismay and gently pushes you back into Seonghwa’s chest. You giggle, and its music to their ears; so soft and bright that if it belonged to anyone else, they would’ve found themselves put off by it.

Since it belongs to you, though, it's become their favourite sound.

——————————————————————————

tagged - @vesvosmozhno

[magicalmanhattanproject]

man im just like. thinking about egg signs and how they've evolved over the course of the qsmp and how the qsmp has evolved over the course of the qsmp and just feeling so much love and affection for every part of the project. i dont have any grand overarching point with this just. like. here's a history of egg comms bc of the kind of person that i am

so wayyyy back ten months ago now at the start of the short and sweet egg event that was planned to last maybe a month at most, the eggs had their own custom, decorated signs!

[ID: Leo with a pink sign with an egg on the bottom corner that reads "hello" in all caps. Her nametag reads Leonardo. End ID]

They were extremely simple, single word signs. There was hello, hola, story, feed, sleep, and maybe one or two more and each was its own separate sign. The eggs could only communicate the most basic needs in words and everything else was through minecraft body language or just hoping their parents guessed right.

But obviously, there was a lot more that parents wanted to hear from their children. I'm not sure who was actually first, but the earliest departure from this system I know about is BadBoyHalo giving Dapper a simple oak sign so he could name his pet slime. (Screenshot from @/lxrd-ren)

[ID: Dapper wearing a diver's helmet standing next to a tiny slime in a boat with an oak sign reading "Bouncy (slmecicle but better)" End ID]

Parents quickly realized how much more convenient this was and pretty soon every single egg had stacks of signs to communicate with.

The next innovation came from Vegetta, who was the resident mod knower at the time. He knew about colored canvas signs and gave Leo signs in her favorite color purple because he loved her and gave her everything she wanted.

[ID: Leo's bed in her room under some Fooligetta fanart with a purple sign reading "<3" End ID]

Colored signs obviously had a lot of advantages. Being able to tell at a glance which egg placed which sign was a huge step forward in eggs being able to have long, complicated conversations as well as leaving obvious marks of their personality everywhere they went. It took a little while for them to be standard for every egg though. Bobby never stopped using oak signs even after Richas and Pomme both showed up with colored signs.

[ID: Two signs reading from right to left a red Pomme sign reading "we already started working on a guillotine factory" and a dark grey Dapper sign reading "thats the most french u have said so far pomme" End ID]

And this was the system for a while! And it worked pretty well for most people! The biggest struggle most people had was egg signs not being translated, but streamers adjusted to that by reading signs out loud so the translators would pick up on them. This also lead to adorable and fascinating dynamics like Richas swearing in signs he wrote for Bad and then warning Bad not to read them out. There was also the genuinely phenomenal development of Leolingo where Leo writes only in Spanish to Foolish because it's easier for her to write and he takes his time to puzzle his way through it and learn in a way that's super cool to watch someone else do onscreen.

Then Tubbo joined the server. And Tubbo himself had no problems at all with the system, but he is dyslexic and he casually mentioned offhand that it was getting kind of annoying to read signs after a ten hour long stream and the admin team Fucking Cooked.

Within 24 hours, they had TTS working on the signs. Within 48 hours, it was working on books too. I can't remember how long it took to get translation working, but it was definitely under a week.

And this opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the entire QSMP. The admin team has been on top of capitalizing on it for story purposes, but also just allowing the egg admins to speak in their native languages to everyone whenever they want has been so enriching for everyone involved. Leolingo is awesome but Foolish has been learning Spanish insanely fast and his process is a lot slower and more frustrating than most people can do in front of an audience of thousands of people without feeling discouraged. That's also one language. We've had everything from Foolish being able to check his work a bit more faster to Phil insisting on his eggs taking a day to speak to him in their native languages to Ramón writing a book for Fit in Cantonese, a language we haven't even seen on the server in any other context!

And all of it is fully understood and fully communicated! Sometimes the translators mess up but no one expects them to be perfect and people ask for clarification if the translator says something that doesn't sound right. It's not only a massive step forward in communication technology, but it's a great demonstration of how to use it and when you can and can't rely on it.

And finally, the most recent innovation! One of BBH's viewers sent him a dono saying they had trouble reading certain signs because they were too low-contrast. Bad, Richas, and Pomme just. Took it upon themselves to fix the problem right there and then. Based on One (1) bringing up their own personal struggle, those three came up with new signs that innovate tremendously on the originals.

[ID: Two separate images of the before and after. The first is the egg signs in their original colors with the corresponding egg's name written on them to demonstrate the font color and the second is in the new, higher contrast colors with the same text. The new signs also have custom decorations for each egg. The second picture also has two signs from Pomme in all caps that read "Send all the love to Richas he spent a whole night making this he's the best <3" End ID]

There are three main innovations visible in the above pictures

1: Obviously, the colors are higher contrast. The signs with white text have darker colors and the signs with black text have lighter colors.

2: The colors themselves are lower saturation. Richas said this made it easier for him personally to read them so he corrected that way, but that's open to change if it causes difficulties for more people than it helps

3: The decorations are for accessibility reasons! People with various different forms of colorblindness will find different sets of colors easier or harder to distinguish, but any of them can look at the decorations and use them to identify whose sign is whose instead.

But! Those innovations are not why I made this post! It's these ones!

[ID: The backs of the new signs when placed on the ground. Most visible are Chayanne's with vines and a hardcore heart, Sunny's with shining sunglasses, and Pomme's with an apple and the Eiffel Tower. End ID]

Richas added distinguishing marks to the backs of the signs too! This is something that Bad brought up specifically as something he wanted because it was hard for him to tell who was talking when he was using TTS from behind signs and couldn't see the colors at all.

We went from custom egg signs (a hotbar or so of words and nothing else to communicate with) through a long journey of expanding communication and expanding who we're bringing along on the communication and how easily they can join in and we've circled all the way back around to custom egg signs (they can say anything they want in any language they want and anyone will know it's them saying it from any angle)

and i guess i have enough feelings abotu that to write All This about it

[actuallyitsstar]

NINE PEOPLE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW BETTER

OMG TYSM FOR TAGGING ME @liass-21 !!!!! i am so sorry i drafted this tag and i thought i queue'd it and i didnt so 😭😭😭 its only like a month late. its fine everythings fine. aaaaaa 😭

LAST SONG? - "photograph" by the midnight! it is on my writing-for-top-gun playlist bc it has huge maverick vibes lol.

FAVORITE COLOR? - pink!!!! also lighter purples and blues and most pastel shades <3 and black

CURRENTLY WATCHING? - a streamer i have never watched before playing the remaster of of tomb raider i-iii bc i am excited about the remaster!! and those games are my childhood <3 not to be a million years old or anything sakfhfjfhg

LAST MOVIE? - unfortunately it was 'oz the great and powerful' 😭 if any of y'all enjoyed that movie i respect it, but i had to see it on tv at a friend's house and we were having a great time laughing at the very unexpected writing and acting choices being made lol

SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY? - aaaaaaaa i guess savory ?????? but sweet has a special place in my heart ajdhfjfhfjg

RELATIONSHIP STATUS? - committed long term relationship to ~my person~ <3<3

CURRENT OBSESSIONS? - well this is gonna be obvious but top gun primarily !!!! additionally, dan and phil !! mission impossible !!! fall out boy!! and even if the current obsession level is not as high as other things, i am always at least partially obsessed with a hundred other things and people that i am probably posting about at the same time lol

LAST THING YOU GOOGLED? - “oz the great and powerful reviews” bc i wanted to make sure that im not crazy and that other ppl also felt that movie was an insane fever dream (apparently due to the 44% on metacritic i guess they did lol)😭

tagging: aaaaaa @brambleberrycottage @daffodilstark @tellhound @torchflies @melancholydandelion @goosefilms @driftershunt @downthegenderriver @callsignstingray

[rafeandonlyrafe]

feeling generous

words: 1.3k

warnings: 18+ only!, smut, dubcon!!, blackmail!!, blowjob, cum eating???, voyeurism, public sex, car crash but like its in a parking lot lol, pogue!/broke!reader

“shit, shit, shit.” you groan, quickly putting the car into drive and moving a few feet, cringing when you hear the crunch of metal coming undone. you throw the car into park and hop out to see your worst fears actualized.

“are you fucking blind?” the shout makes you jump. you didn't even realize that the owner of the car was sat in the driver's seat.

“im-im so so sorry.” you shake your head quickly, surveying the damage. you caught their back bumper with your own, the red paint from their car flaking onto your silver one. “i-i didn't see how close-”

“no shit you didn't see! jesus fucking christ, do you know how expensive this car is?” he shouts, standing to his full height and slamming the car door closed. you don't know how much the car is, but judging by the look of it and the man driving it, certainly not cheap. “this is a custom paint job too.” 

he places his hands on his hips, eyes shifting between glaring at the ruined back end of his car and you.

“insurance and id. now.” he huffs out. “before i call the cops.”

your eyes widen. you have the minimum required insurance, and even that payment is killing you, there's no way you'll be able to afford it if you get an increase for a crash.

“can i pay you out of pocket?” you offer, clearing your throat, trying to keep a level head.

“no way you're able to afford it.” his eyes turn towards your car. it's old, a junker, but gets you around fine enough. and best part, it was free, a hand me down after your grandma bought a newer car.

“i-i probably cant, but i can't afford the insurance increase either and i- we can work something out. please.” you don't care how pathetic it is, you'll get down on your knees in the parking lot if you have to. you're not beyond begging and pleading.

he looks you up and down before grunting, heading back towards his car. your feet spring into action, grabbing onto his wrist, not wanting him to reach for his phone.

“no, please, sir-”

“rafe.” he says, hand twisting so now he's the one holding your wrist. “my name is rafe.”

“oh.” you blink up at him before responding. “my name is y/n”

“you shouldn't have told me.” rafe holds his hand up. “in case i change my mind. you're lucky im feeling generous today.”

“oh my god, thank you so much!” you feel tears well up in your eyes.

“don't thank me yet, darling.” his gaze turns dark as he looks down at you, only now realizing how tall he is, how he towers over you.

“what do you mean?” you question.

rafe takes your hand gripped tightly in his fist, turning it and bringing it down to place it on his crotch. your eyes widen when he moves your fingers back and forth over his shorts, stroking along your length.

“i- what are you doing?” you try to pull your hand away, but he's holding on too tightly.

“it's either this or we can get insurance involved.” rafe looks at you, the shiny lip gloss smeared over your mouth. you may be a broke pogue, but your mouth should be good enough to please him, to ease some of the tension from getting his car hit.

“im not a prostitute.” you say, certainly not meaning this when offering to work something out.

“yet you're gonna get on your knees and suck me off. or i call the cops.”

“right here?” you look around the parking lot. it's pretty empty, but it's the middle of the day, the sun shining down on you, making the illicit act obvious to anyone who looks between where your two cars are parked.

“yeah.” he shrugs, pressing your hand harder into his crotch. he's obviously hard, seemingly almost painfully so.

you look back to the damage, the cherry red color that you're sure isn't stock, and then sink down to your knees. rafe smirks down at you as he drops his hand away from your wrist, light purple bruises already forming.

you gulp and resolve yourself to what you're about to do, tugging at his zipper before undoing the button on his shorts. you open up the flaps, eyes widening when you take in his length through his underwear.

rafe chuckles before pushing the elastic down to pull his cock out, exposing it to the warm summer air.

“suck.” he simply commands.

you open your mouth, taking an experimental lick at his tip, surprised that the taste isn't completely repulsive. you lick again before wrapping your lips around the head of his cock.

“come on.” he spurs you on. “do it good or ill cum in your mouth and still make you pay.”

the threat has you moving quickly, sinking down onto his cock, closing your eyes so you don't have to see rafe looking down at you. he may be attractive, but you're still getting forced to do this. 

“ahh, that's good.” he groans as you set a quick pace, bobbing your head up and down. you pray no one pulls into this part of the parking lot or looks your way. you'd be absolutely mortified to be seen on your knees for a man in the middle of the day, not even going into his car to suck him off.

rafes hands grip your hair, pulling them into two makeshift pigtails.

he lets you stay in control for a while longer before he gets sick of you sucking him off however you please. he shoves his hips forward, causing you to gag when his cock buries deep in your throat.

rafe doesn't give you time to recover, thrusting while holding your head still by the hair, tears now streaming down your eyes as he pushes in then out, in then out.

“fuck, you're actually good.” rafe chuckles. just his luck the dumb bitch who hit his car gives good head, your throat tightening as you swallow around him with every thrust.

you feel the combination of drool and tears drip down your chin, hoping rafe cums soon so this can end.

you place your hands on his thighs as your knees dig into the pavement. your jeans are going to be completely ruined by the time rafe is done with you, but at least you'll have money to buy a new pair.

you feel rafes cock swell in your mouth, your eyes widening to look up at him, the sun behind his head, illuminating him in a perfect halo, but he's no angel.

rafe pulls his cock out before he can cum. you stick your tongue out, knowing exactly what to expect as rafe strokes himself quickly, moaning as if he doesn't care about being seen as his cock shoots out ropes of white cum onto your face and awaiting tongue.

he taps the tip against your tongue, smearing it through the mess of white. “kiss it.”

it's humiliating, but not any more than what just happened. you pucker your lips and press a kiss to the tip of his cock, seeing that it's already beginning to soften.

rafe tucks his cock back in as you pant on the ground, hands coming to your thighs as you try to gain composure.

“hey.” rafes voice has you looking back up, your eyes widening when you see he's got his phone now, taking a picture of your disheveled state, face still covered in his cum.

“what was that for?” you shout.

“part of your repayment in case you ever try to go back on our agreement.” you understand what rafe means. in case you try to tell anyone he forced you into it.

rafe smiles when the look of acceptance sinks into your features as you resign to your fate. he bends down, looking you in the eye before his tongue presses against your jaw, dragging up your cheek, tracing the trail of your tears, not caring that he also tastes his own cum on his tongue. 

“see you around.” he smirks, swallowing your tears dramatically as he gets into his car, speeding away before you even get your knees off the ground.

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[fiapartridge]

you don't go to parties | j. hughes 🎆🪩✨

“i don’t know who im looking for ‘cause you don’t go to parties anymore…” you don’t go to parties, 5 seconds of summer

pairing: jack hughes x fem!reader

summary: after ending your relationship with jack, he finally plucks up the courage to attend a party—and all he can think about is you.

warning(s): cursing, smut (like they have sex but it’s more heated & slow than trying to be super smutty), angst + fluff?? (in some aspects LOL), also noticing now that there was no protection so beware lol

author’s note: i don’t write smut so this is probably the closest ill ever get to writing it LOL but it’s much more for the plot rather than it trying to be super 18+, r-rated type smut yk

wc: 4.01k

not proofread

Glitter hung in the air, every room bathed in a purple glow as Jack hung by the wall, nursing a beer he had managed to snag from the cooler outside. The air was thick with the scent of perfumes and sweat, and the music thumped in his chest, yet he felt—detached, almost alone in the scheme of things. 

The party was a blur of lights and sounds, of hookups and dancing. None of it held any interest for him, but his friends had practically begged him to come. They nagged him the entire summer to leave the lakehouse, to have a drink at the bar downtown, or even to just go on a drive with them, but Jack always came up with an excuse. “Can’t. Training for next season,” or “Gotta raincheck. Something came up.”

They knew what it was. It was obvious. He was missing you. You plagued his mind every second of every minute of every day. Jack knew he had messed up. The moments leading up to the collapse of your relationship replayed in his mind like a broken record—the arguments, the tears, the things he said that he couldn’t take back. The memories of you haunted him. He could feel you throughout the whole house.

You met Jack when you were 17. He hosted a draft party at the lake house the second he got back home to Michigan. Jack, being the cocky teenager he was at the time, made it an open-invite party. Sure, it wasn’t smart on his part but he was a clueless teen. He didn’t know better, but he thanks himself everyday knowing that that one decision led him to meeting you.

Your brother—one of Jack’s school friends—had been invited and asked if you wanted to come. You were hesitant at first. You had seen Jack around school, laughing loudly with his friends or pressing a girl up against the lockers, locking themselves together with heated kisses. You had always found him obnoxious, masking his stupidity with insensitive jokes and being portrayed as a “dumb jock.” But ever the hypocrite you were, because there you were, at that obnoxious, insensitive guy’s draft party. Go you.

Entering the house, you noticed the high ceilings and swarm of strangers that knew Jack better than you; who were probably wondering why you were even there, or who you even were. To your left, a group of friends talked animatedly on a set of plush couches, their drinks spilling out of their cups with every swing of their arms, and their makeup perfectly done on their face like they had hired professionals for this specific event. You felt out of place and, to your luck, your brother had abandoned you the second you stepped through that door.

Who knew you could be surrounded by hundreds of people, yet still feel so alone?

Weaving through the crowded house, you made your way to the backyard, which was just as packed as inside the house, except there was a slight breeze and it didn’t smell as terrible. String lights criss-crossed above the partygoers, creating a canopy of twinkling stars. A fire pit crackled in one corner, Adirondack chairs lining the perimeter as guests chatted all around you. The pool was lit within, its water glowing an intoxicatingly vivid blue. You stood there, watching the stillness of the water as everyone filled around you. The music thumped in your chest, in your ears, in your bloodstream, but you watched the water, and for a moment, you felt okay.

“I always wanna jump in at parties,” a deep voice said beside you. 

You hesitated before speaking. “Why don’t you? It’s your party, isn’t it?” you asked, face-to-face with the man of the hour. His chestnut hair was cut short, truly showing how young he is. You wondered how he could do this: have eyes on him at all times, have so many expectations weighing on his conscience, being judged constantly. It felt—suffocating, to say the least.

“Do you know how many hockey legends are here?” he laughed, as if the building was swarmed with secret spies. 

“And yet you’re standing here. Why’s that?” you asked, looking up at the boy.

And for the first time in your life, Jack Hughes looked at you. And it wasn’t in the gross, disgusted way he looked at clumsy kids in the hallway, or the way he looked at pretty girls like they were his next meal. He looked at you in earnest, an emotion you didn’t even know he was capable of possessing.

“Do you think I don’t know you?” he eyed you, his brow raising as you broke his—hate to admit it—intimidating gaze. You watched the water before you, crossing your arms over your chest as you began to feel that unwelcome, fish-out-of-water feeling again. Moving closer to you, his voice fell almost to a whisper as you felt chills run down your spine due to the proximity. “I know you’re the obnoxious girl that thinks she knows every answer to every question, who already judged every single person at this party without ever learning their names, who doesn’t like me, yet still came. Why’s that?” he asked, repeating the same question you had asked just moments before.

You felt bare in front of him, confused as to how he knew any of that stuff about you. Surely he was too busy making out with girls and slinging a stick around to pay attention to you. So why had he just read you like a book without you having to say a single word?

You shrugged. “I wanted to see what you were about, I guess.”

“Yeah?” he smirked, his tongue poking his cheek as you dared yourself not to look up at him. “How’d I do?”

“Not sure yet.”

He bumped his shoulder with yours, butterflies bumbling around your stomach. “Not just a dumb jock, you know. That’s all Luke.”

You scoffed quietly, a small smile playing on your lips as you lessened up the need to try to fight it. You were smiling because of Jack Hughes, and to be honest, you didn’t really mind it. “He asked me the difference between a square and a rectangle once,” you joked. You had some classes with Luke, and while you two weren’t best friends, you still talked to each other once in a while.

Jack laughed, watching Luke in the corner of his eye try to talk to a girl that was way too old for him. “You’re laughing,” he smiled, noticing you cover your face and still your giggles. “See, I’m not that bad.”

You rolled your eyes before looking up at him. He watched the partygoers on the other side of the pool mingling, his jawline sharpened and his moles scattering much of the surface area of his face. You hadn’t noticed much about his appearance until then, until you finally got a good look at him, at his personality.

You two sat poolside for a while, your legs dipped in the water as you talked about anything and everything. Occasionally people would pull him away to chat, but he would always come back to you, telling you all about the boring conversations, how much he hated networking at a party that’s supposed to be fun, how he hated being treated and expected to be like an adult when he was far from it.

He didn’t notice he was talking to you for so long until the party thinned and it was just you and him in the backyard. Cups littered all around you, his mom picking them up as she not-so-subtly eavesdropped on your conversation. His brothers were inside the house, watching you two from the kitchen window, and Trevor and Cole speculated who you even were while trying not to pass out on the couch in the living room.

For the first time in a while, Jack felt, I don’t know, good about himself? Like he wasn’t praised for doing such little things, or told he’s some amazing person just because he’s good at passing a puck around. Like he was able to talk, and someone was there to listen. And for some reason, he actually kind of liked being criticized by you. It showed that you paid attention; that you were real. He hadn’t met someone real in a while.

He remembered the time you had dragged him to a New Year’s Eve party at your friend Avery's apartment a couple years later.

He was wearing “2024”-shaped sunglasses that matched yours, and a shiny, gold, plastic fedora that made you laugh every time you looked at him. His arms were wrapped around you from behind as you entered the house, his lips planting a kiss on the crown of your head as you two separated to hug the group of people that stood near the door.

You talked to your friends, catching up on everything you guys missed in each other’s lives while in college. Jack snuck up behind you, kissing your cheek before slipping off your coat and placing it on the couch by the entrance. 

The party was chill, much more relaxed than any of the parties Jack was invited to that night. You had urged him to go to them, knowing he would have much more fun with his friends, singing karaoke, getting wasted, and blasting music until they can’t hear anymore, but he shook his head, saying, “Parties are only fun if you’re there,” he shrugged. “Besides, how am I supposed to get my New Year’s kiss without you?”

The two of you mingled for a while, sharing nostalgic stories about high school and the time Jack had confused “pads with wings” with pads and chicken wings. The living room was filled with soft music and the hum of conversations. Jack kept close, his hand finding yours every now and then as if to ask if you were okay, if you needed food or a refill on your drink, if you were tired and wanted to go home—you were always his first priority. 

As the night progressed, the countdown to midnight drew closer. People began to gather in the living room, excitement buzzing in the air. Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve played on the television as Jack pulled you to a spot where you could both see the screen. His arm wrapped around your waist, and you leaned into him, sniffing his cologne and laughing when he caught you.

Before you knew it, the countdown began and everyone started chanting along.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

You turned to Jack, his eyes locked on yours, a charismatic smile playing on his lips. Even after dating for five years, he still managed to make you nervous. You had hoped that that feeling would never go away. You want to be nervous because of Jack Hughes every single night—forever.

“Seven, six, five…”

The room seemed to fade away, leaving just the two of you standing there.

“Four, three, two…”

Jack’s hand gently cupped your cheek, his palm warm and tender against your skin as you leaned into it. 

“One! Happy New Year!”

Cheers erupted around you, but all you could focus on was Jack as he leaned in—not too slow, not too fast—capturing your lips in an impossibly better-than-the-last, sweet, honey kiss. Your hands were in his hair, his were glued to your hips, and it was perfect. And for a moment, it was just you and him, sharing the first kiss of the new year.

When you finally pulled away, grins were etched to your faces. You still couldn’t believe he was yours.

“Happy New Year,” Jack whispered, his forehead resting against yours.

“Happy New Year,” you echoed.

Jack’s head rested against the wall behind him, his eyes closed, the music muffling around him as he thought back to the first time he said “I love you.”

It was your 18th birthday and you were celebrating it at the lake house. Knowing Alex, Trevor, and Cole, they planned this huge rager for you, inviting nearly half the neighborhood—and then some. 

After you said your hellos and knowing that the party could continue without you, you wandered upstairs, finding yourself in Jack’s room as you sat on his bed; his gray cover soft under your fingertips as you brushed over the fabric. You just needed a minute. 

Before you knew Jack—like, really knew Jack—you hadn’t had a birthday party in years. It wasn’t like your family didn’t care about you, or your friends didn’t want to celebrate you. Everyone in your life meant something to you, and you meant something to them too. You just couldn’t go to parties to save your life. You would walk in, see all the girls that are prettier than you, all the guys that act like you don’t exist, you’d get in your head, get overwhelmed, and leave quickly after. This just wasn’t for you.

And because Jack knew you, he knew you would be upstairs.

The door slowly creaked open, causing your head to rise, and a sigh to fall from your lips—just Jack. He smiled at you, shutting the door softly behind him as he sat beside you on the bed. You two sat surrounded by the soft glow of dim lamps, and the distant thumping of music that had seeped through the floorboards beneath your feet. 

His heart pounded in his chest. He knew you were beautiful, but sometimes he’s just so amazed by you, like you’re a new person every single day. Like there were new discoveries to be made, like he could never get bored with you. To Jack, you were everything. And who needs anything else in the world if he had everything sitting right beside him?

His hand rested on your thigh, his thumb running up and down the exposed skin. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

You furrowed your brows. “For what?”

He shrugged. “For the party. I know you didn’t want it.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want it,” you murmured, sighing. “It’s just—I’m not Trevor, or Cole, or the number one overall draftee, Jack Hughes,” you smirked, bumping your shoulder with his. 

He shook his head. “No one’s telling you to be. We could’ve watched a movie,” he suggested, grinning. “Or gone on a shopping spree, or went on a drive. You don’t have to do anything for anyone else, especially on your birthday.”

“I like parties when you’re there—and no one else is,” you laughed as Jack scoffed, a smile pulling at his lips.

“I like those parties, too.” He went silent for a minute, just the hum of music playing from the outside filling the room as you focused on his thumb on your thigh. “I know I’ve been busy with hockey and everything lately, but I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re not important to me, or that I’m not thinking about you, because I am—all the time. You’re the most important person in my life.”

Your heart swelled at his words as you squeezed his hand. “I know, J,” you nodded. “I knew what I was getting into when you asked me out,” you smiled, meeting his gaze. 

He had been busy with his rookie season for the past year: being called a bust, getting injured over and over again, fans questioning if the Devils made the correct choice with him. He grew quiet during those months, more frustrated—with himself, with his game, with the people around him. You were worried for him, begging him to just talk to you about it. He shielded himself from everything and everyone. He almost lost you because of it, and he vowed to never do that shit ever again; to never get so close to losing himself that he ends up losing you.

He took a deep breath, his eyes never leaving yours. “You’re really fuckin’ cool, you know that?”

You rolled your eyes, that smile planted on your lips never fading away. “I know.”

Laughing, he smiled, a small, genuine smile that made your heart skip a beat. He pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around you in a warm embrace. “I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

You buried your face in Jack’s chest, breathing in the familiar scent of seasalt and ocean breeze. “Luckily for you, you’ll never have to find out.”

He kissed the top of your head, his chin resting on your hair as your cheek laid against his chest. “I love you,” he whispered, the words spilling out before he could stop them.

He felt you tense beneath him, pulling back slightly. His heart sped up. “What?”

He gulped before breathing in. “I love you,” he repeated, his voice steadier this time. “I think I’ve always been in love with you—you make it hard not to be.”

Your breath caught, a small smile encapsulating your blushy face. “I love you, too.”

Before you could say anything else, Jack closed the distance between the two of you, his lips capturing yours in a tender kiss. The music was gone, the thumping of your heartbeat was put to the back of your mind, every doubt and every worry you had for this relationship was dissipated immediately—nothing existed at this moment. It was jack, jack, jack, plus a hundred times more.

Jack’s hands found their way to your waist, pulling you closer, deepening the kiss. You responded naturally, your fingers threading through his hair, holding him close as if afraid he might disappear, like this moment was just a figment of your imagination. 

Gently, Jack guided you higher up the bed, his movements careful and deliberate. He laid you down, hovering over you, his eyes filled with adoration. “I love you so much,” he whispered against your lips before capturing them in another kiss.

Your hands roamed his back as you tugged at his shirt, eager to feel his skin against yours. Jack immediately understood, pulling away just long enough to discard his striped tee before returning to you, his kisses growing more urgent. 

As you pulled him closer, your own shirt joined his on the floor, your lacy red bra standing out against your skin. Jack’s breath hitched at the sight, his hands trembling as they traced the contours of your body, committing every inch and every curve to memory. He wanted to explore every dimple and every mole, every birthmark, and every faint touch that made you squirm. He wanted to know you, as thoroughly as possible.

“Holy shit,” he murmured breathlessly, praising you to the highest level. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

Jack’s lips left a trail of kisses down your neck, his breath hot against your skin. He paused, his gaze meeting yours, a silent question in his eyes. He wouldn’t do anything unless you wanted to. You answered with a nod, your fingers tracing the lines of his jaw before pulling him back to you. 

“I love you, Jack,” you whispered against his lips. “I want this.”

Jack’s hands moved with increasing urgency, his touch sending shivers down your spine. Roaming lower, they explored the curve of your waist before slipping beneath the waistband of your pants. His fingers found their way to your core, gently exploring, teasing.

A soft moan escaped your lips, your body arching against his touch. “Jack,” you breathed.

He kissed you deeply, his fingers moving with deliberate, tender motions, drawing soft gasps and breathless moans. “I love you…so much,” he murmured against your lips.

Your breaths became ragged, his name becoming the only thing left in your vocabulary. The room grew warmer, more intoxicating. Jack felt you getting closer to your high, quickly removing his fingers before you could reach it as you whined out, breathless.

He paused, his forehead resting against yours, his breath hot and heavy. “Are you sure you want this?” he asked again.

You nodded, your eyes locked with his. “I’m sure, Jack. I want you.”

With a shuddering breath, he captured your lips again, the kiss deep and all-consuming. His hands found the clasp of your bra, unhooking it, and letting it fall away. He stared at you for a moment, taking in your bare body before his lips began to trail downwards, worshiping every inch of you.

Your hands found the waistband of his pants, your hands working sloppily as you fumbled with the button. Paying no mind, he helped you, discarding his pants and boxers in one swift motion. Jack’s body pressed against yours, the heat of his skin against yours almost too much to bear. His kisses were everywhere, trailing down your neck, across your collarbone, and finally to your breasts, where he lingered, drawing soft moans from your lips.

You arched against him, your body pleading for more, for everything. "Jack, please," you whispered, your voice barely more than a breath.

He met your eyes, his gaze soft and safe. "I love you," he said again, his voice full of emotion. "Let me show you how much."

With that, he kissed you deeply, his body aligning with yours. The moment he entered you, it was like everything else fell away, leaving only the two of you, connected in the most intimate way possible. The rhythm of your movements, the gasps and moans, all blended perfectly, like this was right where you were supposed to be—with Jack, here, and in love.

His thrusts were slow at first, measured, each one driving you closer to the edge. The feeling of him inside you, filling you completely, was overwhelming. You wrapped your legs around his waist, urging him to go deeper.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he repeated against your lips, over and over again. 

Jack’s thrust became more urgent, his breathing ragged, matching your own. His heavy grunts, as your fingers dug into his back pulling him closer, closer, impossibly closer, filled the warm room. 

As your climax built, your hands weaved through his hair, needing to feel him, needing to be as close as humanly possible. Each thrust hit harder and faster than the last, bringing you closer to the edge. 

“Jack,” you cried out, your body tensing as that unfamiliar feeling approached, the high almost too much to handle.

His face was buried in your neck, holding you tightly. “Y/N,” he groaned, pushing you through your high, his own release nearly there.

With a final thrust, the string you held onto so tightly, slipped from your fingers, a balloon inside you erupting at the feeling. You cried out his name once more, your body trembling with the force of your release. Jack followed, his own climax crashing over him. 

You clung to each other, your bodies trembling with aftershocks. Jack held you against his chest, his breath ragged, and his heart pounding against yours.

As you laid entwined, the world slowly came back into focus. The sounds of the party were distant now, a faint reminder of where you were. But at that moment, it didn’t matter. You didn’t care about what was going on downstairs, who was missing you, or who was asking for Jack. All that mattered right now was the two of you, and it felt perfect.

“Don’t know if I said it enough, but I love you,” Jack chuckled, his arm wrapped around your small frame.

You smiled, your fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin. “I love you, too, J. Always.”

Always.

  Always.

    Always.

      Always.

         Always.

Opening his eyes, Jack watched the crowd around him, his gaze instinctively searching for you. He didn’t know why he was doing it. There was no point—not anymore, not when he fucked everything up. Not when he let you slip from his fingers and leave his life entirely.

His eyes settled on a girl in the corner of the room, a red solo cup in hand, her cheeks a flushed mess, and he wondered why he was even at that party. None of these girls could hold a candle to you, not even if they tried. 

Yet Jack watched the door, and willed for you to come, despite knowing you don’t go to parties anymore.

[basicallymikewheeler]

Byler has some of the most obvious colour coding ive seen, like ever in teenage-adult media.

and one of the scenes that feels like they are dangling them right infront of them

okay so, mike = blue and will = yellow, we all know this. and the two times they were wearing eachothers colours simultaneously, they fought.

rain scene:

and the other time being what im talking about rn, is the rinko mania fight.

as the fight begins, we can see the obvious blue and yellow lights in the background, which are also accompied by pink/purple colours (els typical colour that she is coded with)

i think this scene was a bit of mixed perspective of both will and mike, so im going to talk about it like its from both their povs

It feels like the yellow and blue lights are further down on the wall, almost like they are making their way up into both of their thoughts. But they are still worried about eleven, so her thoughts stay above

and here, we see all three colours in wills frame. like hes still worried about his sister, but also the flaming hot garbage can of a friendship both he and mike have

also to mention- contrast - as the scene progressed the blue and yellow stop fading together on their faces, they start to contrast, symbolising the clash of characters

and then we switch to mike, who is quite literally ALLL blue and yellow. after will brought up their relationship, its all hes thinking about. all hes concerned about. and he clearly doesnt like the thoughts hes having because he become quick to be defensive, “WE’RE FRIENDS…. we’re friends.”

and when will follows up with “well we used to be BEST friends,” mike suddenly retracts, realising hes overthinking it, and will is being purely platonic. realising that he had those thoughts that will was talking about a friendship. and that he shouldnt have thought like that. WHICH TO IMMDEIATLY FOLLOW THAT FUCKINNNNG CONVERSATION

AS SOON AS HE STARTS TALKING AGAIN:

A STRANGER THINGS CUSTOM SONG CALLED “IN THE CLOSET” starts playing. (a double meaning song cus el is literally in the closet as they’re arguing.)

and then mike gets defensive, taking the blame of these queer thoughts off himself.

then after his defensive outburst, he feels guilty. And his mind goes immediately back to el. “lets just find el”

and then theres this frame that i dont even have to fucking say anything cus wtf