By Amelia © September 7, 2026
P
is for Ply. It's not only a fun magazine (waves!), it's how we can bring our yarn into balance, or force it out of balance. Plying adds structure and strength to fibers. Usually, plying is taking two or more spun singles, and twisting them together in the opposite direction they were individually spun until they balance each other out. But that is the tip of the plying iceberg. Come join me, the water's warm! There's B for Boucle; C for Cable, Chain, and Crepe; H for Hawser... We could have a spinner's alphabet of nothing but plied yarn constructions.
One of the most interesting things about plying for me was recognizing that twist in singles goes dormant when they sit. So what seems balanced when you ply is actually underplied. The best way to make sure your plied yarn will be balanced (or, intentionally, not balanced) is to have a fresh sample plied back on itself. You can even make this out of dormant twist by making the ply structure you want, and then putting it into warm water. This awakens the dormant twist in the singles and the length will wriggle into balance. Take it out of the water, press it in a folded towel - or edge of your shirt - and wa-la! a fresh sample shows you what balance looks like. Ply to match that sample, and you will find your skein wet finishes into a balanced result, despite acting overplied while being made.
This warm water method is a bit more difficult with multiple step constructions like hawser, crepe, cable, and boucle. With those I often guess and then if needed use rough finishing to lock in the result if I guessed wrong. I have plans to spin a balanced two-ply yarn, gently wet finish it to wake up the dormant twist in the singles, and then once dry, make a cable. I'd like to see how the cable looks at different levels of twist in the singles, knowing what I actually had for a balanced 2-ply yarn: the puffy 2-ply from low-twist singles to the dense 2-ply from high-twist singles.
And returning to my opening remark - Ply is a remarkable magazine about all things spinning. The photography is both stunning and informative, the articles are all organized around a central theme for each issue, and it has continued to deliver great content since its kickstarter beginning. They even had an issue on Plying! I enjoy being both a reader and a contributor to it. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it! They now have two sister magazines as well, Purl and Weft, as well as an online spinning guild. Lots of great information about fiber arts!
There you have it: plied yarn and Ply magazine, a dual-purpose letter this week. What's your spinner's P? Do you read Ply or participate in their online guild?
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© September 7, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/
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