Necessity is the mother of Invention

That Plato he was a smart one!

So, last night I was reskeining yarn and I was so annoyed at how slow it was going that I decided to do something about it. First, a little backround info - I am a spinner and handpainter of yarns and yet, I do not own a Niddy noddy - I know it's adsurd (for those of you who are thinking very bad thoughts - take a look HERE where you can see a niddy noddy in action) Instead of the proper tool, aka the niddy noddy, I've been winding my yarn around the table in my hallway. The hallway table is great because it's a yard wide and makes measuring my handspun very easy - I drag my spinning wheel into the hallway throw the bobbin on the lazy kate and wind away. This is fine for under 150 yards of handspun but when I'm reskeining 480 yards of sock yarn it gets to be really tedious. I figured what I needed was a skein winder - something like this , but since it was about 9 pm and I wanted something right then and there this is what I did:

I broke out the power tools - the cordless drill with all of the bits, and my nifty jigsaw (E and I bought this when we were making our hallway table - it really does come in handy!) and I turned this:

our lovely dinner try which was muched loved but has admittedly, seen better days.

into this - now I don't have to wind around the table and it's much faster - it spins great due to some washers a large bolt and a plate which normally holds a table leg in place. This is the prototype - I'll be heading to home depot this weekend to pick up proper supplies, and make myself one which is a little more balanced and smoother. I'll also add another peg in the center so turning it is easier, and have been thinking about how I can mount it upright - I could probably mount it to the wall but I don't think E would appreciate that.

And this is my reskeining set up - the ball winder is in the middle because I needed to use the little metal hook - the swift was much too high to wind onto the skein winder evenly. The winder is screwed onto a scrap peice of wood and the clamped to the table for support. As usual E thought I was insane, but I was rather proud of myself!

I don't have any new knitting content but I want to say a big thank you to my secret pal who sent this over on tuesday:

yes that is Trekking XXL in Colorway 100...oh yeah I LOVE it! All the goodies were wrapped in colorful tissue paper and it was all very thoughtful - it even had some destressifying stuff in there for my hectic days! My SP rocks because many of the items in my gift box were from other handcrafters - I love when people support the little creative types! Thank you so much SP!!!

For all of you who are waiting for Brooklyn Handspun yarn - it's on the way. The snowstorm delayed the mail a bit, but you'll get it soon! There is no update this week, because I've decided to update the store every two weeks instead of every week. It'll be less stressful for me and I'll be able to have more yarn both dyed and handspun in each update. So look around the Shop next Thursday for a nice update!