I've never been particularly good about making sure I start with the same amount of fiber for each spindle and this time I wound up with an unconscionable amount of single left on one spool. This lead to searching for information about an Andean plying bracelet which I found here and that led to this which looks like a mess around my wrist, but which in fact is such a plying bracelet and worked perfectly.

This was actually my second attempt at the technique and having succeeded once, I had to get fancy. The red/white/blue had been done as a three ply and for whatever reason, I had run out of one bobbin altogether and had about half as much on the second bobbin as the third. So, I did a bracelet with the long single and plied it together with the short which worked out very nicely as far as singles length went but I will say that three plying using a bracelet for two of the plies and a single from another bobbin rather calls for having three or four hands for tensioning purposes instead of just two. I suppose it would get easier with practice but the experience didn't leave me with the burning desire to run out and get more practice so I'm not sure it will get any easier. It was, however, successful. The red/white/blue is done and I get to move on (back) to other things, like plying the silk and angora and plying the wild raspberry and...