Would you like to teach at PLY Away 2017?
PLY Away 2016 was a resounding success and we’re already hard at work planning 2017 and 2018!
Use Your Yarn
I teach a lot of classes and I am always surprised at how many spinners I meet who don’t use their handspun yarns for projects. They give me lots of reasons for it. (1) They don’t think they have enough yarn for a project or (2) they don’t have enough matching skeins or (3) they think their yarn is crappy or (4) they don’t really know how to use it or (5) they sell it.
I have answers for all of this and I hope if you are a person who doesn’t use their hand spun yarn that I can help you change your mind. Let’s go through the reasons one at a time.
Number 1: Not enough yarn for a project. 
For this problem, if you are a knitter or crocheter, I love Ravelry. If you go to the Patterns section you can search based on yarn size and yardage for projects and you would be amazed at how many projects there are available for small amounts of yarn. I just finished this Lucky Cowl designed by Amy King with a teeny tiny skein.
Number 2: Not enough Matching Skeins
It’s funny how we all have some kind of color scheme that we stick to when we buy fiber. what that means is that most of your fiber will coordinate. It doesn’t need to matche exactly to make a project. In addition, this shawl was made with 3 different thicknesses of yarn. and it worked and it’s warm and I love it. This shawl was made using the Knitting Lace Triangle Shawls book by Evelyn Clark
Number 3: The Yarn isn’t Good Enough
This is a terrible excuse! Here’s the great thing about using your yarn – The lumps get hidden in the fabric or make a nice texture. See the yarn on the right? It’s Columbia, three ply, spun with a long draw which is less consistent than short draw. It also is a roving that has a lot of neps in it so that adds to the texture. I used it for the Hiro 
Sweater which was designed by Julia Farwell Clay. But check ouot the finished sweater! All of those lumps disappear!
I wear this sweater all the time! You can even see the dirt stains in this photo because I don’t want to take it off long enough to clean it. I love it so much I’m thinking of making another one. Probably with lumpy yarn, too.
I used the same fiber for a weaving project I’m working on. I made the yarn a bit thinner but it still is not very consistent but I made a beautiful skirt from the woven fabric! (Ignore maggie’s messy room behind me.)
Number 4: Not Sure What to Do With It
This is where sampling or trying things or just swatching comes in. Maybe you need a beginning knitting/crochet/weaving lesson. Maybe you need to find a group of people who are also interested in yarn. Maybe you should pick out a project from a Ply Magazine issue and work on it.Most of us are spinning smooth yarns and the magazine reflects that but there are plenty of articles, the current issue and a couple of issues coming up that will inspire those of you who love textured yarns.
Number 5: Sell The Yarn
Here is where I will climb atop my very tall soap box. And these words go for even those who don’t sell their yarn but aren’t using it. How can you know how to improve your yarn if it isn’t being used in any projects or swatches? How do you know that it even works as intended? Please, please, please! Use your yarn. See how it acts in the fabric. See if it softens or gets more firm. check if the plying is too tight or too loose. Make sure it doesn’t fall apart or begin to pill before the skein is even used up. These things will make you a better spinner.
If you don’t know how to weave/knit/crochet, ask a friend to try some out and give you feedback. You can always use these samples and swatches to help sell future yarns.
Yarn is not a finished object.
What are you working on with your handspun yarn? Let me know!
And the Winner Is!
Thank you so much for all of you who took the time to review the Texture Issue of Ply. The winner of the batts is Christina Bowers!
Learning to Love the Singles yarn
Guest blogger Amberlee Venters visits us today with her story of learning to spin outside her own box and give singles yarn a try, both for spinning and knitting. If you’ve ever been hesitant to spin a singles yarn, Amberlee’s story might just inspire you to try an experiment of your own.
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The Inspiration
In my spinning room (if you understand “room” to mean “bin in a closet in a room,”) I have a bunch of 4-oz braids of gorgeous, multicolored roving, which is mostly the result of several years in a fiber club that I never could quite stay on top of. These braids, bags, and bumps sit there, nestled in amongst their brethren, waiting for the day that they will reach their full potential.
I have only knit with singles yarns a few times, and during those experiments I learned of my tendency to remove twist from the yarn as I knit – a super-helpful technique for creating a finished object without a million ends to weave in. This, along with the multitudes of plied yarn available to me, has been enough to generally put me off spinning singles.
As I rarely knit with singles I also don’t tend to spin singles that will remain singles. My goal since learning to spin has been to achieve the coveted sock yarn, consequently I almost always approach my spinning with fingering weight in mind. So the idea of spinning something new, along with the motivation that this new method might result in going from braid to yarn in a shorter period of time, led me to give singles another try.
The Experiment
I sat down with a 4-oz braid of Falkland wool, zero expectations, and no plan. I debated with myself the best way to spin this fiber: Do I go with my default fingering weight? Or, more accurately: Will I be able to achieve anything else at this point? Maybe I should try to aim for something thicker. This is a singles yarn after all, it’s staying a singles yarn. And anyway what if I hate it? Better to have less yarn if I hate it.
As I discovered, spinning singles yarns goes refreshingly quickly! Within a few days I filled the bobbin and exhausted t
he fiber. Success! I had made a single that would stay a single, and with no plying to do I was practically done! The next challenge would be winding the yarn off the bobbin. (See above comment re: I accidentally untwist everything I knit.) To my complete surprise I was able to wind the yarn from the bobbin easily and with no breaks. More Success! Perhaps it would even make it through its bath in one piece! Maybe I’d even manage to not felt it into a huge mess! I eagerly drew a tub of water and deposited the fiber within. What emerged some time later (I tend to forget when I put things in to soak. Surely I’m not the only one? No? Just me? Cool) was the most uneven mass of yarn I had created in years. When I first learned to spin I read that once you attain the thin, beautiful, even sock yarn of your dreams it is nigh impossible to spin anything other than fingering weight without extreme concentration and clarity of intent. Since I went in to this with neither of those qualities, I expected the worst. This yarn came out completely uneven and crazy, but also squishier and softer than anything else I’d managed to create thus far. So maybe it wasn’t a failed experiment after all!
Now the real test – could I knit with this yarn without untwisting it and ruining the project? I settled on a simple cowl pattern – the Variance Cowl by Lisa Mutch – a quick knit in case thing went hilariously awry. As it turns out this was a good choice, because I did indeed untwist the yarn while I was knitting. Twice. However, I ended up with a very lightweight, squishy, soft cowl. Lighter than anything I’ve made before, despite its lack of lace and abundance of wacky inconsistencies. This is a revelation! (This wacky hobby of mine is a bit silly out here in California, you see. Making lighter weight items is key to enjoying knitted things for more than a month or two each year.)
The Results
Confronting my hatred of singles has taught me a few things:
- Spinning for singles yarn is speedy compared to the slow spin of sock yarn. This is great news, especially when faced with a seemingly unending bin of 4-oz braids from fiber clubs.
- I have to watch my twist, particularly because of my knitting problem. If I had been more fastidious regarding the amount of twist added I probably would have encountered less untwisting in the knitting process.
- Not spinning fingering weight yarn is really tricky! I still ended up with a finished yarn that’s somewhere in the range of heavy fingering to sport weight most of the time.
Going into this experience I fully intended to continue disliking singles yarns, but this is not the case at all. I’m sure I’ll experiment more with spinning singles yarns for the sake of singles in the future, but I definitely need to plan my attack more completely (if you understand “completely” to mean “at all”).
Amberlee exists on Ravelry under the slightly embarrassing username: amberleesapain. She currently has no blog but is considering starting one.
Where Does Spinning Lead You?
I was so excited to interview Diane Varney for this new issue of PLY. Her book, Spinning Designer Yarns, has been such an inspiration to so many spinners.
I was excited to hear what inspired her and to find out what she was spinning now. Except she’s not spinning now, not at all. She spun enthusiastically for a time, wrote the book, taught for a couple of years and then quit spinning. I was stunned. There is so much love of spinning and fiber her book, I assumed she would still be doing it 20 years down the road. It turned out that for Diane spinning lead her to other things, embroidery, metal work, and ultimately painting.
I’ve thought about that a lot since I talked to Diane. For me spinning had lead me to other things, but they also include spinning. I started stitching and instantly wanted to use handspun. I’m picking up weaving again and won’t pretend anything other than I’m most curious about how my handspun will behave in the loom. Spinning is so enmeshed in my craft thinking that every new craft I try includes spinning in some way, rather than just being a stepping stone to to other media. Twenty years down my road I’m sure I’ll still be spinning.
Where has spinning led you?
Thin? It’s All Relative
Our latest issue of PLY is all about spinning thin yarn. When I think about thin yarn I think about that finer-than-fine yarn, that’s really thread, some spinners can spin.
I say some spinners because so far I’m not one of them.
As I read through this issue I realized that thin is relative. I usually like to spin fattish yarn, aran weight or worsted so my particular thin is a 2-ply fingering weight yarn. One person’s thin isn’t another person’s thin and it doesn’t have to be. I’m happy with that. All of the knitting I’m doing lately is for fingering to aran weight yarn, so my thin-for-me yarn is perfect.
I’m sure I could spin finer if I had a burning desire or a particular project where I want to use a finer yarn. Actually, there may be finer yarn for me in the near future because my current fingering weight yarn isn’t quite fine enough for the stitching I’m getting more and more excited about.
How fine will I go?
Studio Time
Sometimes I call my work room at home my studio. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I was in an actual recording studio with cameras and stuff!
I recorded two vidoes. One called Spin Thin all abut how to spin fine yarns and the other is Getting Even, all about spinning more consistently. It was scary and fun all at the same time.
Plus I had professional makeup with EYELASHES!
I took a lot of stuff.
There were plenty of samples.
I was really nervous but I pushed through it.
The camera guys were awesome. And funny.
And then it was all over.
The videos are being produced by Interweave and will be out in July and August of this year if all goes according to plan. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you when they are ready.
Covers
I was just browsing around this here website. It’s pretty, isn’t it?
I went to the page called Issues. Have you looked at it? With all of the covers of all of the issues so far all in one spot? Seriously, I think Ply has the most beautiful covers of any magazine. Yes, the articles are full of information and the photos inside are really pretty but the COVERS!
That’s from the Twist issue and it’s still my favorite.
Ok. That’s really all I was thinking about today. I gotta get back to work. Deadlines are looming and I don’t want to get the side eye from Jacey.
Wheels: New Mexico
I always find it so interesting and beautiful, the different wheels we spinners use. I love that there is a wheel for everyone. I thought you might like to see the wheels that were at the workshop in New Mexico. There’s some well-known wheels and a few lesser known ones!
Did I tell you we have a new copy editor?
I know I told you we were on the lookout for a new copy editor, but did I tell you we hired one? Her name is Karen Robinson (and I can totally put that online because you’ll see it on the masthead soon enough), and I couldn’t be happier.
It wasn’t an easy decision. Not at all. Within 48 hours of putting up the call for a copy editor we got over 200 applications. As they came in, I broke them into 3 groups (so they’d be easier to manage) and replied with the test packet. The test packet included our just-barely-there style sheet (the thing with all the specific-to-PLY rules that we try to follow), one article in 2 stages — edited by me (what they’d get if they had the job), and the final, print version (so they could see what their job would entail), and another article edited by me that they had to copy-edit.
Within 3 days almost everyone had returned articles and I sat down to read. And I sat some more. And then I sat some more. It was a lot of sitting and reading. Some I could dismiss right away – not that they weren’t good – but just not the level of editing I was looking for (some too deep, some too shallow). Some went into my maybe pile and a few went into my yes pile. My plan was to go through the yes pile again first and if I didn’t find somebody, to reach into the maybe pile. I can tell you that my maybe pile was about 25 and my yes pile was about 25.
That meant more sitting.
I never had to reach back into the maybe pile because the yes pile was full of amazing editors, most of which are more qualified to do my job than I am. There were 6 that copy-edited the style sheet. There were 3 that copy-edited my entire email. There were 2 that copy-edited the finalized article that had already gone to print! It was a little intimidating, honestly. I liked them all. Finally, I narrowed it down to 5.
Our of those 5, I couldn’t choose. I felt like I’d just be closing my eyes, spinning, and pointing, so I sent all 5 to Kitten. I may be the one that reorganizes and restructures but he’s the one with the close eye and quick brain for editing. I told him to choose which one he’d like to work with and while he said all 5 were good, Karen was his top pick.
And so it’s Karen. And Karen rocks!
You’ll see her handy work in the next issue (the Leicester issue). She’s going to make us so much better!
Give her a little welcome, won’t ya?
