Plying with a drop spindle

As I mentioned in my last post, my honey made me a CD drop spindle. We did modify it a bit. We added a hook to the top to make it easier from me to use. We added another CD to make it heavier since I'll be working with fairly large quantities and we made the dowel a bit longer then suggested to give me more space on the shaft to store the yarn.

I took two skeins of my beautiful, recycled, cotton, LWI dyed yarn,



wound them into center pulls




then started plying them together.





It took me awhile to figure out how to use the spindle. I thought it would be one continuous motion, rather then spinning a length of yarn, winding it around the spindle shaft and repeating for hours and hours.

I fell in love almost immediately. I never realized how much better it would make my yarn.





Each skein was approximately 200 yards, and I grabbed the yarn from each end of the balls, so I was plying 4 strands together, to get a total of 100 yards

Now, ideally, I'd skein it, wet it, hang and weigh it down to set the twist and to take out the recycled curliness, but I just couldn't wait, so one lucky dolly (Karen) got a nice new sweater!






The difference in the plied recycled yarn vs. non plied is truly amazing. I think I could have even put more twist on it and it would have been even nicer, but, alas, it was my first try.

I don't think I'll be selling the plied yarn until I get a wheel though simply because working in the quantities I do, and using a spindle, it would take me forever and a day and cost my customers a fortune.