A spinning miracle

So I showed you the beautiful new wheel I got at Sock Summit.  Time to show you what I've created with it so far.



This is a 2-ply worsted (mostly) weight yarn that I spun up in about 3 days.  One day for each single, then another day to do the plying.  Honestly I would have finished in two days except that I've heard that you have to let your singles "rest" overnight before you ply.  Anyone know why this is? What's the benefit?  It was pretty frustrating to have to not use my new wheel while I waited.

I wanted to try to spin a thicker yarn as recently I've been drafting down to almost lace weight.  The choice of ratios presented by the Joy and the ability to finely adjust the tension made it pretty easy to stay at solid worsted weight.  That's not to say that there are not some think and thin spots, but very few.



In fact, that's where my miracle comes in.  You know how you have to split your fleece into two so that you can spin your singles, then you ply your singles into a finished yarn?  (Of course you do.)  You also know how no matter how hard you carefully separate your fleece, you always end up with more left in one "half" than the other.  Well, look at this.



That's how far I was off by.  Less than a yard.  When my first bobbin ran out and I looked at the other to see how much was left I could hardly believe my eyes.  My singles were by no means perfectly consistent, but they must have been inconsistent in pretty darn equal amounts.

The fleece I started with looked like this.



It came in 3 little 1.5 oz. slivers of natural undyed Corriedale wool.  I got it during the Portland Yarn Crawl back in March.  It was pretty soft to the touch as sliver.  Now that it's spun it has a slightly "rustic" feel to it, but not too bad.  I plan on making the Habitat hat with it.  All in all I ended up with about 168 yards so it should be just enough.  Awesome.