Rosebud Singles

Over the weekend I finished spinning the third bobbin of Rosebud singles and once they get a few days for the twist to even out, I'll ply them. Most people recommend plying when your singles are fresh and the twist is at it's most active*, but since I finished the first bobbin about a week ago, there's no way the recently finished bobbins will have the same level of twist. After attempting to ply singles with different levels of active twist when I first began spinning, I figured out that it just doesn't work for me very well. I can still get a balanced yarn, but the singles coming off the bobbins get really squirrelly and cause all sorts of problems if some are active and others are more dormant.

*When you spin a singles yarn, immediately after you spin it you have what's called "active twist." This is really a nice, technical way of saying that if you were to take your singles off the bobbin and try to wind a skein, you would have a crazy mess. Once the singles have a chance to sit on the bobbin for a bit (even 48 hours makes a huge difference in how singles behave), the twist begins to be "set" into the fiber and the singles will be less twisty and crazy. Once you add steam or water to the singles, it reactivates the twist and it goes back to having active twist. Usually when you steam or soak the yarn, it's not as a singles, but as a plied yarn and when the twist reactivates, it is controlled by the plying twist (opposite to the original spinning twist) and they even each other out.