Navajo ply-on-the-fly: Whoa!

Navajo ply has become my favorite plying technique so far. With the drop spindle it can be a little bit tricky to get the knack of doing all the motions in the right order without becoming a tangled mess. But once you get the hang of it, I find it a lot easier than plying the usual way. Mostly because it only requires managing the tension on one single, rather than two or more.

But if you have mastered the Navajo ply on your drop spindle and you want to kick it up a notch, try this "ply-on-the-fly" business! Yowza.

Ply-on-the-fly is great for the drop spindler who wants to save a bunch of steps. Normally you would spin your yarn, wind it off (into balls or onto a bobbin), and then later come back and ply it all. But if you want to streamline your production, and if you are an impatient person who wants to make yarn right away, you can skip all that and just ply it all up.

The basic idea is that you spin a length of yarn, but before winding it onto your spindle, you ply it up right then and there. I know, right?! Frankly, just thinking about it blows my mind.

Tammy Rizzo is credited as this technique's inventor. You can watch her video "Tammy Rizzo's ply-on-the-fly technique" here. It's still the best resource for beginners, although many other spinners have added their own changes and refinements to the technique.

Two things have kept me from using this technique myself. First, I am 100 percent positive that I would mix up my rotation directions, since you have to spin in one direction, then immediately ply in the opposite direction. I am not attentive enough to keep that straight. Second, I have had bad experiences with energized singles, which is what you're working with here. Although I have heard that it helps "settle" the yarn if you let it sit in a ball for a while after plying it up.

Image courtesy Flickr/Carissa Marie