PLY #52 - Experimental, Spring 2026
 
This issue is all about experimentation, and our contributors have put on their lab coats and safety goggles to examine a range of possibilities with fiber and spinning. We start with an article on how to design a spinning experiment and end with one that gives five ideas to experiment with so you can set up your own experiments. 
In between those two articles, you’ll find experiments on combing short fibers and carding long fibers (the opposite of the typical prep) and on adding fiber to the intake drum vs the main drum on a drum carder. But do you even need tools to make a great woolen yarn? We cover that too.  
Have you ever wondered if the length of draft for your long draw makes a difference? Or if it matters if you use a short forward or a short backward draw? Should you spin locks from the butt end or the tip end? And if you want to make sure your yarn is durable and strong, you’ll find several experiments that look at fine fibers and abrasion, how the prep for a worsted draft makes an impact, and how plying plays a role. 
If you change your drive band to a different material, what does that do to the yarn you create? How does the weight of your spindle or the whorl placement on the spindle affect the spinning experience? How much twist can you add to your singles yarn and to your plied yarn before it creates bias in the knitted fabric? What about twist direction for crochet? And we can’t forget the importance of finishing your yarns, but how do you decide what finishing method to use? 
 
All of these questions and more are answered in these pages.