Getting All Wound Up

Having had that lovely lot of yarn made earlier this year, I realized I was going to need some new fiber handling tools to properly deal with it.  Making skeins with my manual skein winder did not appeal when I realized I'd be making at least 4 skeins per pound, probably more, and I had 50-some pounds of yarn.  Eeesh.

 Electric skeinwinder to the rescue!

Say 'hello' to mah leetle fren'.

 But of course, if I DYE a skein it will need to be re-skeined to look and handle its best for sale.  So that means I need a swift, too.  The little wooden umbrella swift I have just doesn't seem up to the task.  Even sturdy ones seem too frail to keep up with the speed of an electric skein winder.  My DH, Handy Dandy Andy, took up the challenge and built a swift to go with the skein winder.

Ta-daaa!

It's shaped a little like the skein winder, but that's mostly because A) you can only make something with arms to hold yarn in one or two configurations and B) since it's meant to work with the skein winder I have it makes sense to be oriented the same way - vertical - and be used on the table top.  But dear Andy, being the farmer that he is, has made some key changes that will make the swift much more rugged than the skein winder.

Solid metal shaft with heavy duty bearings to hold the arm assembly.

You wanna drive it at 50 mph?  No problem.

Metal tracking to hold the adjustable arms securely without wobble.

Adjusts for 1 yd, or 1.5 yd, or 2 yd. skeins.

And they sit side by side on the table to work.  Here we are, ready to test the two together.

Readdddy?  Settttt?....

GO !!!!!

They have a maximum speed of Much Faster Than I Want To Go.  Very efficient.  Aaaaaah.....

And here's the result...









Bin of 3 ply worsted, anyone?

As if working with wool wasn't fun enough all ready!

On to the bulky 2 ply!