Christmas in July

It's not July... but the colorway of this gorgeous braid of Cheviot top is called "Christmas in July":

I grabbed this from my stash bin to spin on my cross-arm spindle, and I did spin a little of it that way... but not much. When my EEW 6.0 arrived last month, I grabbed this and got busy! It was great to be able to spin fine singles in less time, because the electric wheel can go so much faster than my treadle wheel. It didn't take me long to spin the rest of the fiber I had. The EEW 6.0 bobbins are BIG, so even though this is more than 90 grams of fiber, it barely takes up any room. I like how you can peek at the cross-section through the bobbin caps:

I wound the singles onto a storage bobbin to help distribute twist, and then rewound 2/3 of it onto other bobbins so I could make a traditional 3-ply:

If you think the singles go fast on the EEW, then BOY does the plying whiz by! I'm not sure I plied this quite as tightly as I might have, but I'm happy with it:

I got 274 yards of 3-ply yarn (76.4 g) at 13 WPI. I'm calling that "fingering" even though the Nancy's Knit Knacks tool does not agree. If you like colorful barberpoles, this is your yarn:

I ran out of one bobbin first, and when I weighed what was left, I realized it was distributed almost perfectly evenly between the two remaining bobbins. So I just plied that off as a 2-ply. There was more of it than I expected - 110 yards (15.6 g) at 18 WPI, definitely a laceweight yarn:

I need to think about how to maintain more consistent twist when spinning on the EEW. On a treadle wheel, I have a certain distance of draft that I do for each treadle, and if my feet slow down or speed up, it's fine. With the EEW, the wheel just keeps spinning and your hands have to keep up, even if you want to fiddle with a poorly drafted section or talk to your family or something. Like I said, I'm still thinking and experimenting. But I'm pretty pleased with this skein!

I have some Manx Laughtan on the Ladybug now, so that will be my next spinning update.