Chain or Navajo Plying

Sometimes - OK, for me, rarely - you want to maintain the striping nature of space-dyed roving. The usual technique is then that you use so-called "chain" or "navajo" plying, creating a three-ply yarn that maintains the colour sequence of the single, and produces a variegated yarn rather than  one that is"barber-poled".

Admission: my chain plying sucks. Mostly because I get no practise at it, since I'm not a big fan of self-striping yarns. But also because I suspect my technique simply isn't very good.

I recently came across an excellent video, that features Sarah Anderson showing you how she executes chain plying. It was a revelation to me. I tried doing it her way, and found that the positioning of her hands really helps the process. I used to pull out each loop before plying it, leading to a jerky, and hence uneven, plying job, but her way of doing it is much smoother and makes a better yarn.

One trick is that you need to have the right tension on your single. A tensioned kate is really indispensable here. You need a tension that will feed easily enough so that you don't break your single (it's a pain to deal with broken singles in this technique!) but not so loose that the loop in your chain goes all squirrely. I tried my cheap version of a tension box - weaving the single through the rails of a rail-back chair - but this is hard to make adjustments to once you're set up, so doesn't work as well at all.

In the video, it looks like Sarah is wearing a skirt, and her single comes from her right on the floor somewhere, but I find it easier to wear pants so I can feed the single up between my legs. That way my hands are naturally positioned in front of me, and they stay there.

Another tip is that chain plying does not "average" the thick/thin variations of your single well. On the contrary, it tends to emphasize irregularities! So if you want even yarn, then you need to be able to spin a nice, consistent single first.

The last tip is that I tend to overply using this technique - the hand motions required slow me down considerably - so I find that I need to do this on my slowest whorl, and treadle gently. This is hard for me to do, because I'm so used to speed (I usually spin and ply on my highest whorl, double-drive style). Perhaps if I practise this more, I can get faster...

Anyways, my first try after watching her video resulted in a much improved yarn. Still a bit overplied but clearly I'm getting better!

[slightly overplied, but much improved, chain plied yarn]

[here's what I made from it. You can see the self-striping in action.

pattern: slightly modded Kindness Shawl by Jaala Spiro, free on Ravelry]

This is now a technique that I'm willing to try more often!

Stripes, Heels and Toes

I've been knitting with a lot of self-striping yarns lately, exploring different design options - I must say I'm not overly fond of letting the yarn do all the work; I get too bored! But in any case, there's always thinking to be done at the heels and toes when using self-striping yarns (or indeed, when making any kind of striped sock). The thinking is required because the stripes in self-striping yarn are affected by:
1. changing the number of stitches you are knitting (ie. increases or decreases), and
2. knitting back-and-forth rather than in the round

Of course, toes and heels are where these two things happen, so you are guaranteed to "destroy" the stripe pattern when using self-striping yarns, at these places.

The easiest design solution is to make the heel and toe out of some plain yarn - either contrasting or co-ordinating. Then you can put in whatever heel you please because it won't interfere with your striped pattern. The photo below shows a flap heel done in one colour (green/camo); I continued in that colour for a couple of rows before the heel to make the same stripe go around the front of the sock).

[striped sock with flap heel in solid colour]

If that's not what you want, here are some ideas:

At the toe, the stripes will naturally get wider, because you are knitting over progressively shorter rows. This can be prevented (ie. make the stripes the same size as on the rest of the sock) by cutting your self-striping yarn and "skipping ahead" to the next colour change, as required. Lots of ends to finish when you're done!

 For the heel, I think the best solution is a "forethought" heel. To make it fit better, don't use little gussets; instead, increase the number of stitches on your heel side by 20% or so evenly on the first row you knit of the heel (if your total number of stitches is divisible by 4, this is easy: k2, [m1 k4] until the last 2 sts, k2). This makes it easier to control the stripe width. You can control the width of the stripes on the heel the same way as you did for the toe, above. The result will look something like below, with a kind of bull's-eye at the heel; the stripes will line up all 'round the heel. (The sock in the photo was made with 2 balls of yarn of different colours, so not really self-striping, and I did use gussets on the forethought heel. But you get the idea.)

[forethought heel with gussets - nice bull's-eye heels]

Heels that really play with the self-striping nature are:

• anything with slipped stitches - slipping stitches changes the striping design completely.
  
  
• any short-row heel, including the Sweet Tomato, because you aren't guaranteed the stripes will line up:

[short-row heel with self-striping yarn -
note stripes do not line up around heel]

• any flap-style heel (which involves back-and-forth knitting) - this includes the Fleegle/Strong - this will insert an area of different striping at the heel. Additionally, because of the gussets usually involved, the rows leading up to the heel get longer, and this will also change the width of the stripes. What you get will depend on the "rhythm" of your self-striping yarn, and is hard to predict. With "busier" yarns it isn't so noticeable, while with simpler stripes it can be quite obvious. You can "fix" this by doing surgery on your yarn to pick out the colours you want.

[flap heel on self-striping socks -

 note flaps have wider stripes due to decreased width of knitting]

[Fleegle/Strong heel on self-striping socks -

while the stripes continue across the gussets, note the small blue triangle

at the base of the heel, due to back-and-forth knitting]

You can always play around with this by putting in a lifeline before you start your heel, so if you don't like the result, frogging it is easy.