Ashford e-spinner with hand dyed merino/nylon singles.
This year I decided to put both my Christmas and Birthday money, from my family, plus some savings, into buying an Ashford e-spinner 3. I finally had enough money to purchase one in June and ordered it from Halcyon Yarns, who are based in Maine. It was back ordered and originally it would have been due to arrive in August, but Halcyon were able to keep it for me until we arrived back from visiting family in the UK during August. Their customer service was excellent!
I decided not to do any kind of unboxing and I wanted to spend time trying out a few things and getting used to it before I wrote anything about it. There are some wonderful videos out there by Angela aka Rainbow Ange at Yarn ‘n’ yarns, Rachel Smith at Welford Purls and Felicia Lo Wong at Sweet Georgia, all three videos were very helpful to me when I was setting up my e-spinner. I will post the links to these videos at the bottom of the page. The title for today’s post comes from Deacon Blue’s song Love’s Great Fears.
Felicia and Rachel both talk about their experiences with both the Ashford e-spinner and a few of the other e-spinners that are currently on the market. I found that my initial experiences with the e-spinner were very similar to those experienced by Angela in her video. The e-spinner had quite a strong uptake and I needed to reduce the uptake and to cross lace the flyer in order to spin a fine single that wouldn’t either drift apart, or be pulled apart by the e-spinner!
I have only used the e-spinner for a short time so far, but I like it for plying and for spinning smooth, worsted yarns. For spinning woolen yarns from rolags and long draw, I prefer to use my Lendrum, which has a gentler uptake and I have the ability to gradually slow down using the treadles while manipulating the singles with both hands if needed. I think both wheels will work together well as a team and I like to have the ability to have different types of projects on each wheel at the same time.
I had the advantage of experience of both spindle spinning and treadle wheel spinning before buying my e-spinner and that helped me when I was getting started with the e-spinner. I think there would probably be a steeper learning curve if using an e-spinner was your first spinning experience, spindle spinning teaches you to be able to draft and gives you time to study your yarn to see how much twist you need and you can easily take out any extra twist too. The Lendrum introduced me to the effects of changing the uptake, tension, speed and to using different whorls to create different yarns, however don’t let that put you off trying an e-spinner out if you can, they can be a very accessible way to spin, especially if space is limited, or you find spinning on a conventional wheel, or spindle is painful, or uncomfortable.