Whee! A new gadget

Well, Patrick of the fabulous Patrick and Lindsay (http://patrickandlindsay.blogspot.com/) did me a really lovely, extra special, favor. He built me a yarn swift having absolutely no idea of its purpose. I only found out recently what one does when I started buying fancy pants yarn that comes in hanks and not neatly wound from the store. First I got a ball winder (not as painful as it sounds, fellas) and started making the yarn "cakes" for my Sylvi sweater. For the first few either I wound while Amanda was the human swift or she wound and I was the swift. Being a human swift is not actually a lot of fun. But the resulting yarn cakes are nice.

This is a cake of the yarn I'm using for my Sylvi. Louet Riverstone Chunky yarn in the Carribean (their misspelling, BTW, not mine) colorway. In some lights, it looks blue, and in others, more green; either way, I love it.

This is how the yarn came to me from WEBS (http://www.yarn.com/). An excellent store BTW, and I'm given to understand that their brick and mortar store (giant warehouse of yarn) in Massachusetts is worth a visit for the yarnies out there.

So to get to the cake stage, we gently untwist the hank and lay it out over the swift, moving the pegs so that the yarn is on just a little bit of tension. For this size hank, 2 pegs in hole #2 and 2 in hole #3 worked out really well. And since there are 5 pegs on each arm, this swift really lends itself to lots of different size hanks. Which is just awesome.

This is the yarn on the swift just before I untied the knots. A very delicate procedure and one best done with the yarn already on the swift to avoid tangling. (Yes, that's Meredith in the background, she eventually came up to see what the fuss was about).

This is the ball winder. This one came from the online store of JoAnn Fabric. I had a 40% off coupon, which made it possible for me to get the more expensive of the 2 ball winders they offer (which has better reviews on Ravelry) for less than the cost of the less expensive one.

Once the yarn is on the swift, then it's time to very carefully take out the knots. Depending on the brand, sometimes the knots are completely separate pieces of scrap yarn that are tied around the hank to hold it in place; those can be cut. With the Louet, each of the 2 knots is an end of the yarn, so I didn't want to cut and waste any of the yarn. Therefore, those got unknotted. Then the yarn gets threaded through the silver tensioner on the ball winder and down into the slots on the post. Then holding the yarn loosely in the left hand to give extra tensioning, it's time to turn the crank with the right hand.

After some turns, you can see the start of yarn cake here on the ball winder. The swift turns as the yarn is pulled and feeds it nicely into my hand without tangling, without pulling, and without the boredom factor that a human swift has. The human swift stands around with the yarn wrapped around outstretched arms and yells at me to stop when the yarn feels like it's going to tangle. The swift (which I sort of want to name Swifty but I can't) is silent, tangle free, and the cats are fascinated by watching it spin.

I wish I had some sort of video capability; I'd post a video of the swift in action, but for now this is the best I can do. Hope you've not been too bored by this.