#ply ball

[comfortabletextiles]

Finished the last rolag, from @swords-n-spindles color fade yesterday! And today I could strat the ply process!!

2oly ball + plyed in chain ply = easy 6 ply yarn!

Even though my singles are always horrible overspun, the ply is very soft so far :)

[milkweedman]

Made a ply ball to make this plying less annoying. I still have fiber left to spin, but I've decided to get started on plying anyway.

This is the suffolk/hampshire blend I've been working on, on and off, for the last couple months.

Nearly there.

Also, some snowdrops for your trouble.

[youcanthandelthetruth]

I had stuff to do today but unfortunately I entered a Spinning Fugue State

[ezekiellsplayground]

3 days of work and everything has been pulled off the spindles & prepped for plying. The yellow is still a singles ball as that’s my Easter Show competition spin waiting for the red alpaca to finish resting.

[mrsmarlasinger]

About to eat toilet paper 👍

[david-box-art]

It took me like 2.5 hours in between fucking up and half unfucking my prep for the cotton I got in a pill bottle, finding out I'm not yet one of those people that can just hand spin a bit and use that as a leader (thats the yellow) and discovering a) this really does need a lot of twist and and b) "medieval style"/twiddling/grasped spinning is *probably* not the best choice for it because of that and I'll need to look into supported style, but i made mt first handspun! It's YARN! Or thread! Depends on where you look! Lol. It's spun! I'm so excited

[spushii]

a little look at what a little more than 2 grocery bags worth of double ply plarn twine looks like.sigh

[botchallthethings]

Good: my swatch looks excellent. Extremely pleased with my color choice and design and colorwork in the round with large, evenly sized yarn balls is far more pleasant than my previous experiences have been with flat knitting or a tiny, wildly splitty ball paired with a normal ball.

Bad: my swatch is a full inch+ too small (about 3 cm)

.

I have no experience knowing how to size up. That seems a pretty sizable difference? I guess I also tend towards knitting pretty tightly. But how many needles to size up? I suppose I could use the larger set I have and see if that’s too big, and then if it is, go to a craft store and get a goldilocks pair.

[communistellewoods]

i'm slowly reinventing the spinning wheel

[exculis]

wanna spin more but i need to find something to watch.

[befuddledbrynntrovert]

So, I've been working on the knit sweater as I had planned, but while doing so I happened upon the YT channel JillianEve and saw her talk about the process of actually spinning yarn. Being drawn to crochet and knitting because I love DIY and the thought of making my own clothes and accessories myself, I thought that making my own yarn would also be awesome! Initially, I tried the CD and rubber bands DIY spindle that a lot of people mention, but ultimately decided to try and make something a bit more proper:

I started off by finding a stick in the garage that child-me stored in the event that I wanted to make it into something (good foresight, child-me), sawed it to 12" in length, used a wood chisel to remove the bark and put notches in the wood to stop the future bindings from sliding, and "sanded" it down using a mill file I had. I then took some hooks that were in a set of handmade train toys that were made for my siblings and I ages ago, repurposed an amber necklace that was, quite literally, just gathering dust (being about ~2" in diameter, it basically makes for a perfect whorl, and fit on the rod perfectly too!), and then made the bindings from some twine that I keep.

Looking at it, I might have been a taaaaad off in how far down I put the whorl, but I can adjust that if need be by redoing the bindings and adding a few more notches. I might remove everything anyways so as to put a finish of some sort on the wood, too (maybe the linseed oil I have).

I'm super happy with it and hope that I can use it to make my own yarns in the future!

[david-box]

Amazing how much easier supported spinning is when you are not in a moving vehicle on a bumpy road or highway

[milkweedman]

Ran out of WIPS I could work on, so now I'm winding ply balls bc all my spindles are full. Couldn't find a pebble to wind it around but did have a die to hand...

[lazyspeedy]

me, prob unwell: i should pick up running

[trashpandacraft]

having sat down and spent a bit of time spinning on all the wheels, i have thoughts on them!

our first contestant: a sheridan scandanavian. kinda.

sheridan was an australian manufacturer in the 70s and early 80s, and this particular model is often mistaken for an ashford traditional. one tell that it isn't is the spokes on the wheel—a traddy has eight, and a scandanavian has six.

another tell is its tension knob, which i actually love—this is a lot easier to get a grip on than the ones that are just balls.

...there's also a nameplate identifying the maker and the model. but that's kinda where things get weird, because this? this is not what a scandanavian is meant to look like.

eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed that it's a double drive wheel, which is weird, because the scandanavian was only ever made as scotch tension. sheridan made a similar wheel, the macarthur, that was a double drive. my understanding is that these wheels were sold as kits, so as best i can guess, someone must have had a scandanavian and a macarthur, and at some point, for some reason, they dropped the macarthur's workings onto the sheridan's stand.

whatever she is, though, she spins nicely—works exactly like you'd expect, even after what was clearly a number of years of neglect. i'd like to get some more oil into the leather bearings, but she's in good shape. this one's a surprisingly slow wheel, even on the highest ratio, but will be great for plying and—more importantly—for @binchickencrafts to learn to spin on.

next up is the tarra...something. maybe the evelyn, but maybe the agnes?

she's beautiful, right? another tilt tension, too, which i like. lovely matching orifice hook with a little storage hole, and integrated bobbin storage, which i absolutely love.

so why's she weird? well. the evelyn was the evolution of the agnes, basically. agnes had a block for a mother of all, evelyn was shaped. agnes had a four-part drive wheel, evelyn had six. agnes had eight spokes on the drive wheel, evelyn had six.

this wheel, though. she has a shaped mother of all, an eight-part drive wheel, and eight spokes.

she also has a really neat flyer.

the flyer is part of what attracted me, to be honest, and no regrets. it needs shined up some more—i was eager enough to try her out that i cleaned off the worst of the rust with some vinegar, but it needs some more attention. those hooks, though, are fantastic. i think that they're a curse for a lot of people, because if one's lost, replacements are almost impossible to come by, but if you have them, they're so good. the screw loosens the hook and lets you slide it as needed, and you can get very close to either end of the bobbin—you can use the stationary hook to wind on right at the front, and the movable hook covers the rest of the bobbin easily. all my treadle wheels have been fixed hooks, so this was a new adventure.

this is the wheel in the worst shape, i think. she needs oiled up, but also needs to have the rear maiden reseated—it's loosened and has a fair amount of horizontal play, which doesn't give the best experience. i feel like when that's fixed, which won't take more than a couple hours and some wood glue, she's going to be a sweet spot of a wheel. even with the movement in that back maiden, i can get from worsted down to cobweb on her, so i'm really looking forward to seeing what she's like when she's been patched up.

finally: the pipy saxony.

please clap.

i can't overstate how small this wheel is. she weighs less than five kilos. that's like. a cat. that's a cat of weight. that's how much this wheel weighs. i knew when i bought her that she was a small wheel, but i hadn't realised how small, so i was a little concerned that she wasn't going to be very effective.

turns out joke's on me, because this teeny tiny wheel is an absolute powerhouse—as long as you want to spin finely. which is perfect for me, because i almost never use or spin yarn that's thicker than a light worsted, and even that's kinda pushing it. i'm the kind of person who knits jumpers out of sock yarn and owns multiple pairs of 1.5mm (size 000) circular needles.

this wheel wants to spin fast and wants to spin thin, and I *love* her. the wheel is weighted so it always stops ready to turn clockwise, and it's a string footman, and something about the combination of the two makes this an absolutely amazing experience. i spun for several hours, and my breaking point wasn't knee or ankle pain, but hip pain from sitting in that position too long.

how the heck does a wheel that—again!—weighs like ten pounds manage to weight anything?

it's easy to miss, but in that first picture, there's integrated bobbin storage again, with room for one on each side of the wheel.

the tension system isn't like anything i've used, and can be adjusted both vertically and horizontally. the tension peg does what you'd expect and moves the slider block (and the mother of all on it) closer or further from the wheel, but you can also move the mother of all towards you or away from you to better align it with the wheel.

she's just really nicely designed. look at this incredibly tidy bobbin release!

for the specific things that i spin most frequently, i'm pretty sure that the pipy is going to be my go-to treadle wheel, though i expect the others will see plenty of use, as well. and my eel wheel certainly isn't getting retired—my somewhat broken body is never going to let me use a treadle as often as i'd like, and there's a lot to be said for the ability to spin while watching television in bed. but i'm really excited to have these, and to use them when i can, even if it's not as often as i'd like.

i know that a lot of people are really dubious about buying used (especially vintage used) wheels, but i feel like they're often underrated. there's a lot of cool wheels out there that are as good or better than what you can buy in a store, and it's worth investigating it, if you're able to. (it's also worth noting that buying all three of these cost us less than half of what buying a single new ashford traditional would cost.)

finally, you want to see my favourite thing about the pipy? i saw someone complaining about this the other day, that their wheel's prior owner had 'gouged' it. but look.

that little gouge means someone else loved this wheel so much that their yarn wore a channel into the wood. and as soon as i stop holding my yarn back, it slots straight into place.

right where it's meant to be.

this wheel is older than i am—they're dated, on the bottom, and she was made in july 1972. she's only had one owner, a woman who used to teach spinning, but is elderly now and can't spin anymore. her daughter delivered it to me, and told me that this was her mother's last wheel—she'd gotten rid of the others, slowly, but held on to this until she was physically unable to treadle. fifty years! that woman spun on this wheel for fifty years.

i'm old enough that i don't imagine i'm going to get fifty years with it, but maybe i'll get lucky. either way, hopefully in another fifty years, someone new will be taking their turn, weirdly touched by the idea that this wheel has been so loved.

[valdomarx]

"Valdo." Jaskier's eyes narrow and his mouth twists with distaste.

"Julian, darling."

Valdo takes Jaskier's hand and presses a kiss to it, as noxious and oily as ever.

"I see you're still," Jaskier purses his lips, "plying your dubious wares for the gentry. How is life as the continent's second best bard? It must be lonely, with only your knock-off lute for company."

"It's called a cittern, you ignorant slut."

"Oh? I thought it was a gittern."

"Do you see a plectrum in my hand??? No??? That's because it's not a fucking gittern. Honestly, how you ever passed the music courses at Oxenfurt is a mystery to me."

"I fucked the professor."

"Of course you did! As I said, ignorant. And a slut."

Jaskier tries hard not to smile, but winding Valdo up is just too much fun.

"It's nice to see you making an effort though." Jaskier pats the forearm of Valdo's doublet. "Gold embellishments are so last year, but we can't expect the latest fashions to have spread all the way to Cidaris in just twelve months, can we?"

"At least I have my doublet buttoned," Valdo explodes. "Not undone to the waist for all to see! Honestly, Julian, I can see your clavicles."

Jaskier waggles his eyebrows. "Then the outfit is working just as I intended."

"You're disgusting."

"You're repellent."

"Your so-called music is an abomination."

"I can't even in good conscience call what you make music."

"You repulse me."

"Darling." Jaskier's laugh rings out across the ballroom. "Meet you in the bedroom upstairs after the ball?"

"Oh, fuck you." Valdo puffs up, then deflates. "And fuck yes."