Ask Jacey! – PLY Magazine

I’ve heard lots of people talk about how there are different joins for different kinds of spinning. I’m not even super good at the one join I do (I kind of tease out the fiber at the end of my new yarn and then lay new fiber over it and hope it all gets twisted together when I start treadling again). Is that a good join and are there better ones? Will you cover these in the guild? ~Melanie, PA, USA

Dear Melanie,

Joins are something many spinners struggle with, so you are absolutely not alone. There are several different types of joins and lots of ways to do each of them. What you want to learn (and practice) is a good join for the types of yarns you spin (and yes, we’ll cover every join imaginable in the guild).

Before I get too far into different joins and how to do them, I want to say this to newer spinners: Don’t let this get in your head. If you’re new to spinning and you are getting any join to stay together, rejoice and keep spinning. Joining can be hard at first (I promise it will get easier, automatic even). Come back to expanding your joining repertoire later, when you’re comfortable and ready. This is not something you must know right now. Okay, for Melanie and anyone ready to work on joins, here we go.

Different joins for different yarn

I’m not sure what kind of yarns you spin, but maybe you spin enough different types of yarns that one join doesn’t suit them all. If you sometimes spin woolen and sometimes spin worsted (or even sometimes semi-woolen and sometimes semi-worsted), you’ll want a join for each of those. After all, a woolen yarn is fuzzy, airy, and lofty, and you probably don’t want smooth flat spots at each place you had to join new fiber (which you’d get if you use a worsted join on a woolen yarn). Conversely, a worsted yarn is smooth, lustrous, and dense, and you don’t want a fuzzy, airy, matte spot standing out wherever you joined, right?

Things that are true for every join

You are always joining fiber to fiber, never fiber to yarn. If you don’t have a bit of fiber opened at the end of the yarn you’re spinning, stop and tease a bit out.

Your new fiber and old fiber should not act like they are new or old. They should act like the same fiber, as if they’re all from the same fiber source.

The area of yarn with the join should be the same diameter as the rest of your yarn. If that’s not possible – and we’re not machines so it’s often not – it should be thinner than the surrounding yarn. Twist goes to and stays in thinner areas of yarn, so if the area with your join is thinner, it’ll hold together better. If it’s thicker and your join isn’t perfect, it won’t hold.

A worsted join

I’ve seen worsted joins done so many different ways, but a few things should be true:

Allow no twist between your hands

Smooth and compress fibers after you make the join

Keep both the old fiber and the new fiber under equal tension

Do a short forward draft during the join, even if you’re otherwise spinning short backwards

As long as you do those things, your worsted join will look just like the rest of your worsted yarn. The key now is making sure your worsted join is secure. That key is mostly in those last two points plus the points that are true for every join – equal tension, using a short forward draft, joining fiber to fiber, treating the new fiber like the old fiber, and making the area of join the same or a thinner diameter. I made a short video to show you what I mean (remember that this is just one type of worsted join; there are others).

A woolen join

I find woolen joins to be a bit easier than worsted joins. Woolen yarns are more grabby than worsted yarns and also not quite as picky. There are several ways to do a woolen join, but they all have a few things in common. Those things they have in common are the things that make these yarns woolen instead of worsted:

Let twist between your hands

Don’t smooth the fibers

Don’t compress the fibers; leave that air in there

As long as you’re doing those three things, you’re making a woolen join that won’t stick out in your woolen yarn. But just like the worsted join, you also want to make sure it’s secure. Since woolen yarns are a little more in chaotic than worsted yarns, the process for making a join is less specific. You just need to get the two fiber sources together, thinking they’re one, and introduce twist to them. My favorite way to do this is to take the new fiber and fold it around the last little bit of yarn I spun (making sure there’s some unspun fiber at the end), draft it forward or backwards just a bit, letting the fibers catch, then continue drafting. It sounds easy because it is! I made a short video of a woolen join here (again, remember that this is just one way to do a woolen join).

Experiment and find your joins

So that’s it! But not really, right? These are just guidelines (and one video example of each join). As long as you follow the guidelines for each type of join, experiment and see what works for you. You can still tease your fiber end out and then lay them together. In fact, that could be the start for either a woolen or a worsted join. Just make sure that the amount of fiber you have teased out won’t twist together and make a bulkier section in your yarn.

From there, you just have to change what you do next to fit the yarn you’re spinning. If it’s woolen, let twist enter those two teased-out sections without straightening them out or aligning the fibers. Resist smoothing your hands over the join (I say resist because I always want to). If it’s a worsted yarn you’re spinning, you do want to straighten out those teased fibers and keep your hands surrounding the fiber, one in front of what will be the join and one behind it. Slowly let twist enter the two fiber sources that are teased together, smoothing and compressing as you also start to draft again.

It might feel like a lot of things happening at once, but that’s the nature of spinning, right? Everything is happening all at once but you’ll get it, and don’t worry if it doesn’t work the first time – it’s only two inches of fiber, so just break it off and start again. That’s the beauty of spinning. We make it inch by inch, and if we’re unhappy with a particular inch, it’s just an inch.

Good luck,

jacey

Dear Jacey,

I’ve been learning so much from your reels on Instagram. Recently you did one describing what the different whorls do to the yarn you’re spinning. You show one yarn and then change the whorl to a bigger one and show the other yarn, but you don’t say which of the two plyback samples is the right one. I’m a new spinner and just can’t figure out how much twist is too much or not enough. ~Celena

Hi Celena,

I messaged you on Instagram, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and give this a bigger audience since I know that lots of people struggle with these same questions. I’m including a link to the reel that you’re talking about in case others want to check it out for reference [add links to IG, YT]. In the 3-minute video, I spin a little bit of a yarn on the smallest whorl of my wheel (in this case it’s a Schacht Ladybug), show the plyback, then change to the bigger whorl, spin a bit more yarn, and show the two plybacks side by side.

For each of the two plybacks I did my best to keep everything the same except for changing the whorl on the wheel.

I drafted the same number of fibers (roughly, because I’m not magic) for each draft.

I drafted the same distance for each draft.

I drafted one draft each time I treadled so we could be sure the differing twist amounts was the result of the whorl change and not speedy feet or hands.

Changing whorls

When I changed the whorl size from smaller to bigger I changed the amount of twist going into my yarn. With the smaller whorl in action, my yarn got a certain amount of twist. When I switched to the bigger pulley, my yarn got less twist. That’s really what I wanted to demonstrate – that you don’t have to know the ratios of your wheel to know what they do relative to each other. I have lots of wheels, and to be honest, I don’t know what the actual ratios are on most of them. If I want to know the real numbers I either have to run a test or look them up online.

However, because I know what the different size whorls do, I can make decisions about which whorl groove I want to use. And if the groove I choose doesn’t make the yarn I want, I change it to a bigger or smaller groove based on what change I want. What will help you, even if you don’t know the ratios, is to know what they mean relative to each other:

Bigger whorl = less twist

Smaller whorl = more twist

Which is right?

But what you’re asking is something else, I think. You’re asking which of those two plybacks is the right one, which one you should see and say “yes, that’s the yarn I want!” And here is where you might not like my answer – it depends. It really does! I didn’t tell you which one was right because they’re both right for something and they’re both wrong for something else.

If there was just one type of yarn that was “right,” most of us wouldn’t spend so much time spinning, right? We’d go buy the one “right” type of yarn at the store and call it done. But the magic about spinning is that there’s a gazillion kinds of yarn you can spin, and each of them is going to be good for something and bad for something else.

Comparing the yarns

Okay, first know that the two plybacks I spun in the video are very similar; the only difference is a little more or a little less twist. Keep in mind that the comparisons I’m about to make about these two yarns would get more dramatic and extreme if we were to add even more (or less) twist to them.

The one with less twist (bigger whorl, left yarn in the video)

Feels a tad bit fluffier: there’s more air in it since the extra twist I added to the other one isn’t there to bundle it down so tight

Looks a little thicker, again, since it didn’t get bundled down so much with twist

Is loftier: less twist means more air and more air means more loft

Might abrade or pill faster

Would show less stitch definition in knitting

The one with more twist (smaller whorl, right yarn in the video)

Feels a little firmer: the more twist you add, the firmer the yarn gets

Looks a tad thinner: as you add twist your yarn gets thinner (even though it has the same actual number of fibers)

Is denser: with each bit of twist you bundle the fibers down tighter, replacing the space where air was with tightly bundled fibers

Will hold up a little better over time; the extra twist will help it stand up to abrasion so it’ll be less likely to pill

Would show more stitch definition in knitting

To know which one of the two plybacks is the right one, we’d need more information.

What craft will the yarn be used for? Knitting, crochet, weaving, something else?

What kind of project? You’ll want different things from a yarn that’s going to be a hat than you’ll want from one that’s destined to be socks.

What is the goal of the project? To keep you warm, to drape down your back? To protect your hands? To look stunning and fill your non-spinner friends with awe and envy?

Let’s assume I want to knit. As a knitter, these two yarns are similar enough that they’d both work for many of the same projects, but those projects would turn out a bit differently. If I only had these two yarns to choose from, I might think through it like this:

If I wanted to knit a pair of mitts

I’d choose the one with more twist. Mostly because the one with more twist still isn’t what anyone would call a high-twist yarn, it’s still soft and airy (just not as soft and airy as the other one), so it would make fabric that was warm. The extra bit of twist would help it stand up to the abrasion that gloves/mitts are often subjected to.

If I wanted to knit a warm, squishy hat

I’d choose the one with less twist and more air. I’m a naturally cold person, so warm hats help keep my head toasty. The airier the yarn, the more warm air trapped in the fabric, the warmer my head. Since heads encounter less abrasion than hands, I’m not too worried that the yarn has a little less protective twist.

If I want to knit a sweater

I’d probably want to do a test swatch of each. A sweater is a bigger time investment, and I want to make sure I know how the yarn is going to act. Will the lighter-twist yarn create the lofty and warm sweater of my dreams? Maybe, but will it pill and abrade immediately? I don’t know. Will the higher-twist yarn feel too hard and dense as a sweater? Or will it make my planned cables pop and sing? Probably, but again, I won’t know until I sample.

If I want to knit a pair of socks

I’d spin another yarn but on a much smaller whorl. Socks need more twist than either of these yarns have, a little more in the singles and quite a bit more in the ply.

More than just twist

And all of these are just decisions I’m making about the twist of the yarn. There are so many other decisions we could be talking about. Is wool the right fiber for the project I’m envisioning? If it is, is this the right breed? Is there another fiber prep that would give me more of the qualities I want? What about the draft? Should I let some twist between my hands while doing a short forward draft? Would a long draw be more suitable? Is this the ply structure I want or should I explore a 3-ply, 4-ply, cable, or crepe? Should I ply to balance or add extra ply-twist? And on and on. . .

Don’t stress

That might all sound overwhelming, like, how will you ever decide about everything? Don’t worry, you don’t have to right now. Just the fact that we have all those choices is why it’s magical to be a spinner – you can make exactly the yarn you want. No yarn is wrong, though it might be wrong for a specific project or use. So experiment, spin all the yarns, figure out what you like and don’t like, trust yourself, and most of all, enjoy the process.

Don’t let the fact that you’re never going to know everything about spinning stress you out; instead, relish the fact that you’re never going to run out of things to learn and spin and you’re definitely never going to be bored.

Want Jacey or Jillian to take a stab at your question? Tell us what you want to know:

Ask Jacey and Jillian Your Questions!

Ask Jacey: How Do I Improve My Joins?

Ask Jacey: How Much Twist is Right?

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