Sunday night I finished spinning the singles of this merino/silk I've been working on, at long last. Then I spent yesterday evening making a plying ball. Basically, I put the two full spindles into coffee cups and wound the singles off them and onto a firm ball. I didn't use a core -- some people seem to find it easier to start with a rubber ball or something, but I didn't have one that was not all spitty from dogs -- so I just started with a little bundle of fiber as I would for a non-center-pull yarn ball.
I did find that the newer method of wrapping the copp works better: you can see that the completely horizontal method results in collapses (and resulting tangles). This is especially true with slippery fiber like silk.
I had a ridiculous mismatch in the amount of yarn on the two spindles, in no small part because my spinning got quite a bit thinner as I went. But also because I just put more yarn on the second spindle, I don't know how (I thought I measured it out evenly). So I tried using a plying bracelet to handle the leftover yarn, but there was really too much for it to be workable, and I lost quite a bit to tangles and chaos. In the end I had this lovely plying ball all ready to be plied from:
That's a ball of two plies running alongside each other, so all I do is feed off the ball and onto the spindle. I could have plied this on the wheel, but after doing the singles on the spindle at such length, I wanted to keep it all on the spindle.
I've even sort-of decided what I'd like to knit with it, but I'm not sure I'll have enough.
I've never made a plying ball, that's nifty. And the elaborately wrapped spindle wins on both function and cool points.
The plying ball is definitely a winner; it's super-convenient to carry around, which you need with a spindle.
When are you going to post about the retreat?