Grab your knitting needles and come relax with me.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Tinkering
I am pretty frugal when it comes to money: I always want bang for my buck and I love dual use or re-purpose. I have always wanted a swift (it holds hanks of yarn while you wind them into balls). It's on most knitters wishlists. It is pretty damn necessary: if you don't have husbands or children willing to hold the yarn for you. Now I have used chair backs: this is aggravating. I have used my own feet: also aggravating-especially if you need to stop and tend to a child. Like most non-swift folks, I have borrowed friends or gone to a ball winding party.
(You know: a bunch of knitters get together to take advantage of sole knitter that has a swift and ball winder)
Aside: also don't have a ball winder. They are expensive and a uni-tasker. So I am pretty unlikely to buy one for myself. So I use other things, empty cardboard paper towel thingy, a pill bottle, or more recently a cute nostepinde I picked up at the craft store.
It's pretty and it's rosewood.
So I don't have a swift. A few years ago I heard around the internet of a wonderful crafty solution for a swift (they are also expensive): a swift made from Tinker Toys.
Haazzaah! I have tinker toys! But this week I finally got around to digging them out from their putting place (they were in the garage, then the den closet). Armed with the tutorial from Crafty Jen, I set to work. Now over the years they've gotten pretty scarce, so I was a little worried I wouldn't have enough of the odds and ends.
But fortune favoured me and I had JUST enough to make it work.
Tada!
I haven't tried it out yet, I don't like to wind hanks into balls until it's time to start: it's a temptation to let the project to jump the line. But I did try to see if one of my hands fit on it...
Of course the real test is actually using it, but it spins fine. So I am not too worried. Besides it was 50 dollars and it's not some one's poor hands. lol
On the actual knitting front, I am still plugging away on the lace ribbon scarf and since I decided that it WASN'T near completion I'd let Citron cut ahead of those socks. (I really want to knit that beauty!)
I need to dig out the Celtic Knot bag and find my place and finish that thing!
