I did a few things that made spinning this sample a MUCH better experience.

1) Oiled the flyer and adjusted the maiden bearing so that the flyer had a little more room to move. It's supposed to sit with a little leeway - I had it in too tightly before.

2) Slowed down my leadfoot tendencies.

3) Spun for 30 minutes, wound off onto a storage bobbin, spun for another 30 minutes. I can't seem to make myself measure out even lengths or weights of top, so this actually worked very well. My two sets of singles were nearly identical in length. I think one was 3 inches or so longer than the other.

With the wheel set at 12.5/1 for spinning and 10.5/1 for plying, I made a very nice, mostly even two-ply with almost none of the overtwisted problems of yesterday.

The finished yarn is about 13 wpi, which I would call a skinny worsted/dk weight. It would knit up nicely on #6 (4.0 mm) or #5 (3.75 mm) needles.

There is not very much of it, but that's why it's a sample. :)

I plan on spinning very skinny singles at the smallest ratio the Ladybug offers, which is 16:1, this weekend. I think the Merino will work really well at that ratio and I'm excited to have some truly tiny yarn. I'll let you know how it went on Monday!