3 ugly merino braids, 2 episodes of The L Word and a raging headache, and this is what I came up with this afternoon:

I must have been on crack the day I died these, because they were UG!LY! But somehow when I combined them, they looked perfect together. It's like magic.

It was torture to spin them all so thinly and evenly, but I think I've really got the hang of Navajo plying. I do it differently than the lady in the YouTube video, but I came up with my own personal system quickly. There was a lot of stopping and starting of the wheel at first but I was a real navajo-machine by the end of the session. I can't make that loop stay on my wrist, but I have enough finger dexterity that I can hold the loop open with 2 fingers on the same hand that's pinching the twist while my other hand yanks the single through. A tensioned lazy kate would help a lot, because the only real problem I had was my single twisting on itself before I had a chance to stop it.

I just showed the tangled skein to my husband, and he said, "It looks like you need to 'Set' the 'Twist'." He's picking up on more of my lingo, how cute. I, on the other hand, still talk about his programming stuff with words like "thingie", "thingamajig" and "you know, the thing with the thing."