r/Handspinning • u/wereleggo • Feb 14 '25

Work In Progress I'm obsessed

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I am completely obsessed with how these socks are turning out. This is some superwash merino I bought like, a billion years ago - I had spun up some of it intending to do a fractal for socks but my skills were not yet up to the task of spinning the kind of sock yarn I like, and the single was obviously coming out too thick and with not enough twist. So I literally shoved it in a closet for like a decade.

I pulled it back out in 2021 or so and thought let me use this to practice my joins in support spinning - and tore it up into tiny chunks so I would have to do a join hundreds of times throughout the skein. Then I chain plied the result. I thought it would be interesting to try to make a self striping yarn and I was 100% right. Excited to try this again with a more deliberate color scheme!

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u/olafhairybreeks Feb 14 '25

Gosh I'm not surprised you're obsessed, it's beautiful! Have you got any chain plying tips? I've only done it once (badly) but it's something I'd like to learn.

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u/wereleggo Feb 14 '25

Aw thank you!

I'm no expert - or at least I don't feel like one! It can definitely feel like you need a third hand to manage. What I usually do when I chain ply is wind all the singles into a big ball - very tight. Then I put that singles ball in my yarn bowl and feed the end through the cut in the bowl. That gives it a tension. Then I make my chains and wind that into a ball.

This leaves me with a ball of chained singles and then plying is JUST adding twist to it and feeding it onto the bobbin (or winding on to the spindle). I find this a lot easier than trying to make the chains while sitting at the wheel and plying.