When I first tried it, I wasn’t expecting Navajo plying to produce a completely different yarn from regular plying, but it does. I tried it on my drop spindle, using multi-coloured singles (where I had spun a little purple for a while, and then switched to a little blue, and then green, and so on).
When I plyed these singles in the normal way, I got a barber-pole effect across the whole yarn like this:
But, when I Navajo plyed it, the yarn came out multi-coloured in sections, like these two:
Both from the same singles, but what a difference!
It’s logical, of course. In regular plying, you are bringing two separate singles together and, if they are different colours at the point where they ply together, then that barber-pole striping effect is what happens. Whereas in Navajo plying, you are taking one single and doubling it over on itself (well, tripling it over, actually) so, in a multi-coloured single like I was using, you are plying like with like for a while, then switching to another colour and plying a new like with like, and so on.
I find the difference really intriguing, and I can’t decide which result I like better. Which do you like more?
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April 14, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Abigail
I much, much prefer the Navajo ply.. but really that’s just in the skein. When knitting with it, Navajo plied yarn sometimes drives me nuts because you can end up with splotches whereas the standard 3-ply gives a more mottled effect.
April 15, 2009 at 3:46 am
Strawberry
Yeah… that’s a good point. I don’t know whether this would splotch or not… Well, there’s only one way to find out, eh?
I’m actually spinning a yarn right now specifically to be Navajo plied, with a specific knitting project in mind. I’m trying to merge the colours so they’ll work well in the ply. We’ll see how it turns out!