Let's back up a minute. As you recall, I decided to do a temperature scarf for our first year in North Carolina. I chose the colors from my stash of lovely Irish wool and went to town. After 11 rows, I had this:
What a mess! Why was this different than my usual yarn? That yarn comes in skeins, like so:
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| Ah, the temperature monster palette before I knew how much orange I would be using. |
A bit hard to work with! The yarn swift keeps the yarn in the correct shape & tension as you use the yarn winder to make your cake. The swift takes the place of a person who could (if you could get them to) stand there with the yarn draped over their arms while you wind it.
You simply thread the yarn onto the winder & the wind the crank.
And then you have a lovely mess! (Darn woolly wool.)
Oh, wait, then you have a lovely yarn cake!
Much easier to work with, and these fit into that really weird shelf in the hall that must have been made for VHS tapes (too shallow for books).
That one giant blue one is 800 yards! I just wanted to see how big I could go. The purplish color in the upper right is also 800 yards & in much more manageable cake sizes. This project, had I not made a TOTAL MESS of three of the hanks of yarn, would have taken less than two hours. As it was, Dr. M spent about two to three hours untangling one of the biggest messes, and I spent another two hours the next night on the other one.
I'm pretty excited & may go through & wind up all the yarn in the house just for fun. If you'd like to see a video of this particular set in action, go here.
Tonight I got caught up with the scarf. It's kind of unruly at the moment. I made it intentionally skinny because with 365 rows, I didn't think I wanted to add much more bulk.
I think I might be done buying things to support my obsession. Although, now that I think about it, I saw these on Etsy & I might need them...
Cool gadgets!
ReplyDeleteLove the use of the shelf for the yarn cakes.
Great color combinations too.
Don't know how you're going to get any "work" done.
I can't believe it, but I haven't wound another cake of yarn since I did these! What the heck!
DeleteMy wife needs a yarn winder. She has a storage box filled with yarn that the cat unraveled into an epic mess.
ReplyDeleteYep - it would help a lot!
DeleteHow cool is that! They are pretty on your shelf.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Deletelove that periwinkle blue bottom right.
ReplyDeleteThat is a pretty color. I wish I could remember what I used it for...
DeletePlease be careful of moths. Just sayin'. Grab some cedar shavings or some cedar blocks and tuck them in and around the yarn. It's too lovely to lose.
ReplyDeleteHave cedar blocks at hand...good point!
DeleteCedar blocks have been deployed!
DeleteI always love how yarn spools up to those pretty cakes. I need a good holder. I always make Ricky stand there with it around his arms ;)
ReplyDeleteI didn't think I could talk Mike into that :)
DeleteThe cakes are definitely neater and more compact than the hanks! (Not to mention the blobs.) Love your color choices.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteA fascinating process. That black yarn reminds me of pasta I had in Italy, mafe black by octopus ink. Looked bad, but tasted good.
ReplyDeleteHa!
DeleteYou brought back some memories...I sometimes was the person who takes the place of a swift when I was a kid!
ReplyDeleteThe spinning wheel can't be far behind! I wish I had the one my parents had in their attic.
<3
DeleteI've only tried a spinning wheel once and it was fun but challenging. You'll get there. In the meantime, all those lovely yarns to contemplate.😊
ReplyDeleteThey certainly are lovely to contemplate - I need to think of what else I can make with them!
DeleteThe gadgets are adorable. But I fear they would simply encourage me to have even more works in progress. Your swift and winder make me even sadder that we lost our local yarn store. Now I use a chair and make the old-fashioned yarn balls. Not nearly as attractive as your cakes.
ReplyDeleteI've had these hanks of yarn for over a year with no idea what to do with them - at least now they're in a form that I can actually use. I will NOT go looking for more yarn to wind. Nope. Not doing that. :)
DeleteThis is all a very different but beautiful world. When I hear "swift," I think of birds, or me at different times, when I'm not very (swift). I love the kind of half-closet. It's obviously been built there just for you, even if the people who built it would have been surprised by how you're using it.
ReplyDelete