Testing... complete.

I've finished my test run with the e-spinner, and the result is 745 m of two-ply yarn.

The things I learned... they are many.

I am a sucker for slow colour gradients in yarns. Always have been - so I had a lot of fun spinning, and I was delighted with the result:


What I'm not as fond of, though, is when the slow colour gradient doesn't match up properly. Which was, unfortunately, the case from about the middle of the two batches. Where there should have been a lot of bright, clear yellow, there was a lot of overlap between yellow and orange instead, and the other colours followed suit.


I'm especially not fond of the mix of very light and rather dark, like the mix of purple and salmon on the very right end of the bobbin. But there was nothing to do but persevere, and finish the plying.

I'm not the queen of plying, by the way. I can spin alright, but I'm not plying often enough to have a lot of practice, so there are more places than I like that are badly plied.

The bobbin was finished in spite of my unhappiness with the colour match:


and at least at the end, the colours did match up better again. I guess I'll find out how it looks when I figure out what to do with 745 m of fine two-ply yarn. Knitting, probably. (Suggestions for patterns are welcome.)

Next step was measuring out the length - that means skeining. Next thing I learned was a two-fer: The plying differences did not even out even though I had a long stretch of the yarn between bobbin and skeiner; and my skeiner is not up to the strain a large amount of wool places on its arms... so I definitely need a new one now, and have to repair the old one. Good thing my length measurement is done via a separate tool and not through counting turns on the skeiner!

Once the measuring was done, I soaked the skein in water, and now it hangs for drying. There are, as mentioned, ample spots where the plying work is not perfect. There are also quite a few places where I could have done a better job spinning. But since the aim of the whole project was to gain experience with the new tool and to get a speed benchmark, that I can live with... especially as I found out that I can spin rather quickly. So now I can calculate for spinning medieval-style yarns on the e-spinner for reconstruction projects. Plus I have some nice colourful yarn to play with. Hooray!