Hello all! I was out shopping in my local craft store and found some "100% wool roving" in the clearance bin. It was in the felting supplies, but I figured wool is wool, right? Apparently not, because when I tried to twist this stuff with my fingers it immediately untwists itself. Maybe it comes from an angry sheep? Any advice will be appreciated :)
When you add twist to wool, the twist will run right back out unless you trap it somehow -- wind the twisted up length on a stick, for example, or on a spindle. Then add twist to the next length (without letting twist out of the initial length) and wind it onto your stick.
A really cool attribute of yarn is that you can take a length of wool twisted like this and fold it in half -- it twists around itself -- when we do this at our spindles or wheels, we call it plying -- and, it *wants* to be plied, each "single" in the ply balances against the other one so it stays plied and doesn't lose twist.
In the dawn of spinning, they must have been quick to discover this -- twist will run out of roving unless you trap it, and two singles of yarn plied on each other will retain their twist. So a plied yarn is strong than wool roving, it can take weight without drifting apart. Cool!
~ Ameliahttp://www.thebellwether.com/ http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/
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