August is an in-between month--between summer and fall, and for us at Spin-Off, between the end of the Fall issue and the beginning of Winter. It’s back to school for children and teachers, but after a lighter summer, it’s when the flood of great new magazines starts.
This may be the best time of year to pick up a brand-new magazine, because we pull out all the stops for fall. The September issue of Vogue magazine is famously influential, and most other magazines follow suit. So what’s coming up in the next Spin-Off? We’ll tell you more details when the issue hits the stands, but in the meantime, I’ll share a peek at two articles.
It’s a well-known characteristic of Orenburg yarns that they combine a strand of handspun goat fiber with a strand of fine commercial silk. But did you know that plying in the Orenburg style involves the yarn coming off the spindle? And that a small disk with a notch in it is an essential tool? We had Galina Khmeleva stop by the photo studio and show us how it’s done. While she was at it she showed us a cool trick for securing a spindle bowl in your lap that will help you spin anywhere.
| |  | | | Galina Khmeleva demonstrates plying Orenburg-style. | From plying tradition to plying innovation, Benjamin Krudwig also stopped by our studios to show us a plying technique we’ve never seen before: Navajo 4-ply. With two bobbins, you can make 4-ply yarns and play with color in a new way. It’s a simple idea, carrying along an additional strand of yarn while plying, but Ben developed a way of enhancing the properties of chain plying while adding strength and another element of color. The technique is full of possibilities--check out the Fall 2015 issue of Spin-Off to learn all about it. 
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