I have a new-found spindle love thing going on and have been doing lots of spindle spinning. Although I do enjoy using the spindles to spin the singles, I’m not really interested in plying on the spindles. Enough is enough! So the next question is management of the singles - controlling the singles and the twist in them - while plying. I tried winding the singles from the spindle into a center pull ball on my ball winder. I did this twice and then wound those two balls into one and plyed from this double strand center pull ball. It worked OK - but the problem with center pull balls is that they collapse as you use them, this caused some problems with run away twist. Next I tried just winding the singles into outer pull balls around felt centers. Again, it was OK, but plying from the two balls I still was having some issues with not enough tension to control the twist. (My singles have a lot of twist evidently!).

 

I’ve come up with a nice compromise which is working really well for me. I use a Katie A Go Go as my Lazy Kate. Using 1/2″ PVC pipe I cut 8″ lengths. It’s easy to cut with a little battery powered saw. An electric belt sander smoothed the edges nicely. As my spindles became full I wound off onto the PVC bobbins. For the two ply yarn I was planning, I divided the fiber into two equal portions. Half was wound onto one PVC bobbin, the other half of the fiber onto a second PVC bobbin. I just put these PVC bobbins onto the upright metal rods on the kate and off I went. This is working like a charm! There is enough drag on the bobbins to keep the singles under just the right amount of tension. Also, should I need more tension, I can use the tensioning thread on the Kate. If you’ve been having problems with singles management give this a try. It was easy and quite inexpensive. Total cost: $2.00 for 10′ of PVC pipe (the minimum the store required I buy).

 

click for bigger pics

 

In case you’re wondering what the washers are doing under the PVC bobbins - I wanted to protect the wood of the Kate from the constant spinning of the PVC. The washers keep the plastic off the wood.