One of the most frequently asked questions about spinning is: “How do you set the twist?” To answer this, it’s necessary to first have an understanding of the nature of twist.

All twist is active. It may be dormant, it may be stabilized but, by nature, it is always active and just waiting for the right set of conditions to allow it to relax and untwist. In that sense then, setting the twist permanently is simply not possible. It is only possible to balance it or to control it on a temporary basis.

Wool is composed of keratin, the same substance that makes up human hair. And every woman knows what happens to her carefully set hair when it’s exposed to environmental factors. If you have curly hair and want it straight it will frizz on a humid day, if it straight and you want it curly the humidity will straighten it right out. There is pillow hair and hat hair. A trip to the salon may result in a beautiful hair do but it will be gone the minute you wash it or get caught in the rain. When hair is set, what is actually happening is that it is being twisted into position by the application of heat from a curling iron or heated curlers or by the combination of pressure from curlers and heat from a hair dryer. The resulting coif is due to the fact that the twist has been set but that set is only temporary. Even a permanent wave gives up the ghost after a time.

The fibers composing your wool yarns react to environmental factors exactly the same way your hair reacts. It may be forced into any position for a time, but it will revert to its natural state as soon as conditions allow it to do so. Which means that setting the twist is only temporary.

Singles yarn, on a bobbin is under a degree of tension and has been stretched during spinning and storage. The yarn at the lower portion of the bobbin is also under pressure from the yarn wound on above it. As long as it is on the bobbin, it will remain stretched, under pressure, and tension and the twist will go dormant. To reactivate the twist, all that is necessary is to expose the yarn to moisture by steaming or washing. Off the bobbin and skeined, the twist will, over time, reactivate itself because the tension is off the yarn allowing the fibers to relax back into their natural state. What happens is that the twist naturally sets itself while it is on the bobbin. Think of the bobbin as a giant hair roller.

When you finish spinning a second bobbin of yarn and start to ply from it immediately, you will see that the newly spun singles have much more active twist than the yarn farther down on that bobbin or than on the first bobbin. This is because all but the newly spun yarn has been under tension and compressed and the twist has had a chance to go dormant and is stabilized and under control for the time being.

What plying does is bring the twist into balance. In other words, there are two opposing twist directions given to the yarn to hold the X number of singles composing that yarn in a state of balance and the skein will hang straight after it has been wet finished. Wet finishing allows the fibers to relax to their natural state and also allows twist to redistribute itself over the length of the skein.

A skein of yarn can be forced to appear balanced by placing a weight in the bottom loop while it’s hanging to dry but the addition of the weight will not make the skein balance. The minute a yarn dried under weight comes in contact with moisture; it will naturally revert to its unbalanced state.

The bottom line is that the twist is never permanently set. It can be temporarily rendered dormant; it can be controlled, stabilized and balanced. But it’s always active.

What’s the best way to stabilize the twist? First, spin a balanced yarn and second, wet finish your yarns.