I have acquired a new tool. I’m very lucky that my company gives a generous bonus each year, and while most of mine went to bills and savings, I did splurge on something fairly large. I purchased a brand new Ashford e-Spinner 3! It came last week and I’ve already spun two full skeins (4oz each) in that time. It’s definitely a workhorse and just a pleasure to spin with.

I’ve had a decent fiber stash for my Ashford Traditional for quite some time, but I don’t find that I spin which it that much. It’s beautiful and spins wonderfully smoothly, but I just don’t find myself reaching for it all that often. It’s a process to get everything I need settled and ready to spin so it just doesn’t happen quite as much as I’d like. The e-spinner is satisfying simple to get going with. It took me a good hour to assemble it, but now it has a permanent space on my desk where it’s plugged in and ready to go at any time. And I’ve been using it.

The first skein I spun was some Three Waters Farm falkland in the colorway Falling In Love. Which is oh so accurate because I immediately realized I was going to fall in love with my e-spinner.

I spun Falling In Love in 6 days. Which to me, was incredible. Until I got to next one. I spun some merino roving from
Created by Elsie B in the colorway Tree Frog. And it took me 2 days. 2 days! That’s amazing to me.

You can see that both skeins are fairly similar in weight. This seems to be my default yarn for the moment. I’d like to work on spinning thinner but I’m in no rush to get there.

I don’t have any idea what I’ll make with these. It may just be that the yarn is the finished object. But they’re both soft and squishy and I would like to knit with them to learn about my own handspun. I don’t have much more color in my stash. I have a little more dyed roving – one pink polwarth/tencel and one red-purple targhee. But the rest is all while or natural color. Since lack of color is a travesty, I got caught by the Created by Elsie B buy four, get one sale. Which I don’t mind too much because I needed more color anyway and she’s doing this sale to support funding for adopting a baby and growing her family. I can support that.

I haven’t been neglecting my knitting in all this spinning time, I’ve been working mainly on the Sophie Hood. I don’t have new pictures but I have been taking it to work and knitting on it at lunch. It did facilitate me meeting work knitter who was working on her first sweater. I’m through the hood and onto the decrease section so it’s going to start moving quickly. Hopefully I can finish soon and get some good pictures.

Happy knitting, spinning, and fiber crafting of all kinds!