plying and twist angle

I was reading a discussion of plying on Julia's blog and thought I would write a little about plying and twist angle since I couldn't stick a picture in her comments! 

When you ply singles that are freshly spun you can hold up a loop of yarn and see if it twists in either direction.  If it hangs straight or nearly straight then you have a balanced ply.  However, if your singles are even a few minutes old, some of the twist energy has been set.  That's because the friction and the scales are sort of interlocking a little bit so it doesn't want to untwist as much as it did when you first made the single.  Therefore you can ply that and do the loop test and end up with an unbalanced yarn (usually underplied) because you were testing singles that weren't really "awake".  However, when you wet them, the twist energy wakes up and then you end up with unbalanced yarn.

There is a way to test yarn balance however, whether your singles are fresh, old or downright moldy from sitting in your closet for a year!  That is to look at the fibers in the singles and see what angle they have in relation to the yarn's longitudinal axis.  The individual fibers should parallel the axis of the yarn in a balanced ply.  (this is easiest to see if you have a multicolored single, but use a magnifying glass if you can't see the angle).  If the fibers instead are slanting in the direction of the ply angle, you have overplied.  If they are slanting in the opposite direction to the ply angle, they are underplied.  This method works no matter what kind of singles you are using, old, new or a combination of both.

Comments

[Julia]

Janel - this is an awesome explanation - the picture is worth a thousand words! By the way, I am smitten with Marnie's Indian Wedding colorway. Any chance you'll be dying any BFL Indian Wedding soon?

[Marnie]

Oh, such a cool tutorial. Thank you!

That indian wedding fiber is my desktop on my computer now. Gorgeous stuff ;)

[andrea]

what a great great tip ~ thanks so much. and i agree with julia, the picture explains it perfectly, i'll always remember it now.

thanks ;)

[Deborah C.]

THANK YOU. I have had a lot of trouble with plying aged singles (I don't have a lot of time to spin, so it's a little here, a little there, until the bobbins are full), and I think this will really help me to have beautiful balanced yarn instead of an overtwisted mess.

[theShizzKnit]

Love the picture and ongoing dialogue regarding twist angle. Have you read Rita Buchanan's article on twist in Spin Off Winter '93?

[Jessica]

Great information! Thank you for posting it.

[Tabetha]

Brilliant! :)

[Lilly]

Excellent explanation. Thank you. I could see the effect, but didn't understand the morphology - now I do. So for a good magnifying glass to carry with me.

[Vickie Townsend Inboden]

So can an overt wist be corrected?