Creating Stacks and Stack Traps Plying

How to… Create Stacks When Plying

First you need two singles with enough twist to ply, that are of a comparable thickness, you could have different sizes but the effect would be limited by the variations. Here I’m plying from a center pull ball of handspun Grey Perendale-Romney on the Paradise Revolution Jumbo system.

A stack is where you allow one of your singles to over wrap in the same place while plying

To start begin plying as you regularly would, continue until you reach the first spot that you want to make a stack, SLOW DOWN treadling, choose which strand you want to create the stack, which strand will wrap around the other.

Move the strand that will be wrapped 70-90° to the orifice while keeping the base strand tensioned and in line with the orifice.

With the hand on the tensioned base strand, slide up to the ply triangle and pinch the very end of the twist and move the wrapping strand up onto the area that has already been plied. (If you sew it’s like sewing backwards to anchor the stitches so edges are less like to come undone)

Once you’ve started the stack on the area that you’ve already plied you can slide your tensioned stand hand down to create room for the wrapping single to slowly move down the base stands and back up again as you’d like. Once you’ve created the stack that you want you need to anchor the bottom of the stack. (You’re still treadling slow right?)

Anchor the bottom by switching so that the base strand is now 70-90° to the orifice, on the other side, and the wrapping stand now tensioned and is aligned with the orifice. Move the base
strand so that it backs over the end of the stack twice or three times. Then return both strands to your standard plying locations, let your hands slide down, without speeding up, to let the extra twist move down, you’ve got some extra twist stored up along the way. Then speed up and continue treadling as normal.

You’ve created a Stack! Awesome more textures in your spinning is in your future…

How about we add some stuff inside the stack creating… Stack Traps!

A stack trap takes the idea of a stack and places something inside the stack. So here we’re putting a blob leftover blue roving, but any short staple wools or cotton works great. (If you have a drum carder the short stuff that gets caught on the “licker-in” small front drum, makes some random cool filler that is sometimes too short to use on other things).

So start by anchoring the stack as you normally would, then lay your fiber on the tensioned base strand and move your stacking strand up and down locking the fiber blob. Be sure to go over the edges of the contrasting fiber and yarn for stability and neatness. Wrap enough to lock the fiber in place but make sure not to cover it all up. Then lock the stack just as you would for a stack.

Now wouldn’t it be cool to use this trick to lock in semi-felted blobs or straps of your favorite left overs?