Plying Handspun Yarns
When hand-spinning, there are two common ways to ply a balanced yarn: regular and Navajo.
When spinning fleece into yarn, you must first scour the fleece, remove the vegetable matter, card or comb it, and then spin it into singles. These singles are then used to create the finished yarn in a process known as plying. The purpose of plying singles is to strengthen them so that they do not break while knitting or crocheting them.
Most spinners (who use spinning wheels) ply from bobbins. This is easier than plying from balls because there is less chance for the yarn to become tangled and knotted if it is simply unwound from the bobbins. So that the bobbins can unwind freely, they are put in a device called a Lazy Kate, or sometimes simply kate. The simplest lazy kate consists of wooden bars with a metal rod running between them. Most hold between three and four bobbins. The bobbin sits on the metal rod. Other lazy kates are built with devices that create an adjustable amount of tension, so that if the yarn is jerked, a whole bunch of yarn is not wound off, then wound up again in the opposite direction. Some spinning wheels come with a built in lazy kate.
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