Practicing my Chain Ply

Chain plying is one of those techniques that up until now has just sort of eluded me.  I kind of understood it, I knew the motions to make, but I didn't really understand how it really worked and since I didn't really understand it in theory I was not having a lot of success putting it into practice.  I understood I was making a chain of loops like you do to chain in crochet.  I think the explanation that you were "folding the yarn back on itself" just further confused me.  

Mostly I just tried it out whenever I  had a lot of singles leftover on one bobbin.  I thought it was just one of those things that needed practice, and if I kept practicing it, eventually it would click and I would make chain plied yarn that I was happy with.  Only that never really happened.  Truthfully, it wasn't too high on my priority list either.  I wanted to feel confident with it as a plying technique eventually, but I was doing just fine making traditional 2-ply and 3-ply yarns.

Sometime in the last month, I was watching a video on JillianEve's YouTube channel and I saw Evie chain plying from a different angle and in slower motion than I've seen anyone demonstrated before, and it finally clicked.  Instead of frantic grabbing though the loop before it closed up, I finally could really see how that 3 ply was being created.  The video was called "Spinning Sock Yarn from a Dorset Fleece" and was part of a series that she did a year or so ago.  

Now that I finally understood chain plying, I was eager to give it a try again.  One suggestion I have heard is to practice chain plying with a commercial yarn, an old leftover in your stash.  This suggestion didn't turn out to be super useful to me.  Since I was already dealing with spun and plied yarn there were weird twist things going on and it was difficult to see the ply structure.  I decided I would have to bite the bullet and spin up some yarn to give this a proper go.

Conveniently, this aligned with my intention to explore more color management techniques.  One of the most compelling reasons to chain ply, in my opinion, is to preserve the color in a dyed braid while making a plied yarn.  

For this project, I chose my Three Waters Farm Mixed BFL braid dyed in the colorway Flannel Shirt.  I have been loving this color for months.  Every time I would see it pop up on Instagram I would have to give it a little heart.  Chain plying was a good option for this colorway particularly because of the colors in this braid.  There are shades of dyed brown as it is, but the other colors (blue/green and red/orange) are complementary.  If I were to do a fractal spin or even just spin it as it came and then ply it, there would likely be a lot of optical blending happening to give a skein that overall read "brown," and that wasn't really what I wanted out of this braid.  I love the vibrant pops of red and orange and electric blue.

I chose to spin this on my Kiwi 3 and selected the lowest ratio I have available with my regular flier, which is 5.5:1.  I wanted to keep the twist relatively low so that the yarn still had a soft hand after plying but also to minimize overtwisted pigtails that might get in the way and cause me headaches while practicing a new plying technique.  I used a short forward draw and tried to keep my singles thick enough that I would end up with about an aran weight after plying.  My plan for the yarn is to knit a hat with it and I enjoy using heavier weights for winter hats.  

After spinning the singles I did allow them to rest for a day before I started plying.  This is typical practice for me for many reasons, but I thought the rest would be beneficial for making the singles easier to work with, especially since I wasn't going to rewind them like I typically do.  I could have rewound them, but because I would need them to all be on one bobbin I would have needed to use one of my Bobbins Up bobbins.  It is a nice option to have, but the trigger finger motion to keep the drill going tends to aggravate some wrist pain for me so I don't use them much.  I might choose this option next time I chain ply a braid though, because although I did everything I could do minimize the pigtails I still had enough of that going on that is caused me some headaches.  Maybe I've just spoiled myself because I typically rewind all my other singles onto storage bobbins before plying these days.

I went slow and the chain plying worked well this time.  I had a couple times that the singles coming off the bobbin pigtailed and I had a bit of a mess to untangle, but for the most part I finally felt like I knew what I was doing.  My finished yarn did come out to an what I would consider an aran weight, about 96 yards and 9 WPI.  I am pleased that the yarn feels nice and round but not hard and overtwisted, which is usually how a 3-ply comes out for me.  My very tactile-sensitive middle child still thinks it is "too scratchy" for him but my oldest likes it and the colors so I think I will go wind it up now and cast on a hat for a weekend project.