Plying Yarns

TRANSCRIPT Plying Yarns

Plying is basically taking two or more singles and twisting them together. So a two-ply yarn is made by twisting two singles yarns. And a three-ply yarn is made by twisting three singles yarns together and so on.

So typically plying is done by twisting the yarns together in the opposite direction to how they were spun. So if the singles were spun in the clockwise direction, then they’re plied in the counter-clockwise direction.

There are, of course, exceptions to this and spinners will manipulate, twist, and find directions to create all kinds of interesting and textured novelty yarns.

But traditionally, the purpose of plying is to release that pent up energy in the spun singles to increase the strength of the yarn.

So my mom always had this little reminder for me. I have two younger brothers and she would always say, one stick on his own is easy to break, two sticks together is more difficult to break, and three sticks together are impossible to break. So it’s just a little illustration of how adding plies also adds strength overall.

Plying also produces an averaging effect. So you know that the yarn that you’ve spun is all lumpy and bumpy and inconsistent in thickness. Well when you ply together the inconsistent yarns, they average out and they tend to produce a yarn that is more consistent in thickness.

Along those same lines, adding more plies creates a rounder yarn. So if you have a two-ply yarn, the cross section of that yarn looks like this. So if you have a three-ply yarn, it looks like this and the yarn looks more round. And if you have a four-ply yarn, the yarn looks even more round.

So why does this matter? Well, rounder yarns work better in things like cable-knitting, where the texture of the fabric is created from the yarn. Three-ply yarns work beautifully in a cable-knitted project because the energy stored in the ply twist appears to expand outwards and it makes the cables pop more.

By contrast, the plies of a two-ply yarn compress together towards each other, and so a two-ply yarn is excellent for lace-knitting because the yarn basically moves away from the yarn over holes and produces a more airy lacey effect, rather than filling in those holes.

Finally, a cable-yarn is a yarn that is created by plying together plied yarns. So for example, you could spin four bobbins of singles in a clockwise direction. Then take two of those bobbins and make two two-ply yarns by plying them in the counter-clockwise direction. And then you take those two bobbins of two-ply yarn and ply those two together again in the clockwise direction. You effectively make a four-ply yarn that is strong, round, and shows off knitted texture really beautifully.

Now that you know why we ply, let’s take those two bobbins of singles and make our plied yarn.