The Heathen Housewife

My spinning has slowed down just a bit since I finished that first project on Earl – I mean, it sort of had to since I’d been spinning pretty much nonstop for the week since he arrived. Now, I’ve moved on to that pound of luscious alpaca, which is wonderful, but not very interesting for blog purposes. I’ll spare you from that for the moment.

In the mean time, lucky me – I got a very good question from reader Missy.

I was wondering if it’s possible to spin a ‘balanced’ single ply yarn? What would you recommend, as far as reading, or practical info regarding this?

Well, to be honest, I’ve never created a single ply yarn without then going on to ply it before finishing and knitting it. This is something that I’d really like to change. Maybe after I finish my pound of alpaca, I’ll pull a smaller chunk out and experiment with spinning and knitting it as singles. Because really one can’t claim any sort of expertise in a thing without firsthand experience start to finish.

Luckily, and this is something that I find translates well into all areas of spinning that I’ve delved into so far, I have lots of experience with knitting different yarns. Even luckier is that I still have some of that yarn laying around and a knitted object or two as examples for photos.

First, some crazy quirky sock yarn, which I knit for the first time a few years ago and liked so much that I bought another skein when I saw the seller again at Shepherd’s Harvest a year later. It’s Sandy’s Palette Pair of Sox, and the socks I’m showing you are Jaywalkers that I made about three years ago and have been wearing regularly ever since.

If we look at this yarn a little closer, we see that it’s a highly energized single. See all the little kinks in the skein? I bet they were much more pronounced before this yarn was washed to set the twist.

This yarn is clearly, clearly unbalanced. If I recall correctly, those little kinks were slightly annoying while I was knitting the socks. I’ll admit it. That said, this yarn made some awesome socks.

All that twist in one direction makes for some cool stitch definition. The fabric is sproingy and warm. We need that twist to hold the fibers together, especially for hard-wearing socks. Mine are in great condition, well, pretty good condition – the heels are getting a little threadbare after something like 100 wears or so.

Okay, and here’s the opposite end of the spectrum on the singles yarn front.

This is what’s left of that Mini Mochi I knit up into a sample pair of socks a couple months ago. This yarn comes just about as close to balanced as a singles yarn can get without being roving. But that’s because it almost *is* still roving. I know I mentioned in my post about those socks that I actually had to add some twist to the yarn as I was knitting along just to keep the wool from drifting apart. And yet, there were other spots where I had to deal with the annoying kink-back business that I dealt with in the Sandy’s Palette skein.

So, obviously, for socks, don’t even dream about a “balanced” singles yarn. Those Mini Mochi socks will last for less than 20 wearings before they get their first hole, I’m guessing. But what if you’re less obsessed with socks than I happen to be, and you want to knit a sweater or a lace shawl with singles?

Well, about a year ago I knit a sweater out of Nashua’s Wooly Stripes yarn. It’s a singles, with just a little more twist than the Mochi – enough to hold the wool together throughout, little enough so that I had to deal only with minimal kinking. It’s fine yarn. Very soft. It’s wearing pretty well, although it certainly has its share of pills. It’s a soft wool, maybe merino – which is going to give you pills even in a 3-ply, so who knows what to say.

So. Back to the question. Can you spin a balanced single? Technically, no. By definition, all the twist is one direction. But I’m here to argue that unbalanced is not necessarily a horrible thing, and that even if it looks incredibly unbalanced on the wheel, once it’s washed, it will relax quite a bit and settle down enough to knit with. Just make sure to spin it enough to cross the line from roving on into yarn.

All of the above comes straight out of my you-know-where. I’m sure I’ve read a thing or five in the many spinning books I’ve skimmed, but I can’t remember what or where, and I’m too lazy to go dig them out and do the research again right now.

Thanks for the awesome question, Missy!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 2:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.