I picket up 2 oz of some beautiful dyed Tussah silk a while back, and I finally got around to trying it out. I chose one of my lighter weight drop spindles to do the job because I wanted to spin it pretty fine.
The spinning itself went okay, although I knew at the time that I was overspinning the fiber a bit. The problems didn’t really start until I started plying.
First I tried using a center-pull ball and plying the center end and the outer end together. No go - it was a big mess! I just ended up with a tangled heap of yarn.
Next I tried taking the center end and the outer end of the center-pull ball and re-rolling it into a double-stranded outer-pull ball. This is the technique I’ve stuck with, and here are the results so far.
Not so good, not so bad, right? I think it’s actually going to look okay, but I’ll know more after setting the twist. The big problem has been that it’s a pain in the @ss to ply because it’s really kinking up, probably because I’m not keeping the singles under good tension when I ply.
Before I try plying overspun singles again, I think I’ll invest in this spindler’s lazy kate. Spinsanity’s idea is genius, don’t you think?
Of course, next time, I’ll also try not to use so much twist in the first place.
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