My brother, Patrick, whose birthday is today, (really -- what other name could he have?), will be receiving this, among other things, tonight at his party.
And what's this -- the state of Virginia in fabric? Nope -- it's my new Strauch Ball Winder from Lawre's Laine -- yippee!
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And my new "Mama Bear" swift from the Oregon Woodworker, with my newest skein of Blue Heron Yarn's Rayon Metallic in Heather, ready to be wound. (Fear not -- I did move it off the floor to the table).
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And this is my beloved Casey, (who likes to be called "Kay-Kay"), inspecting my progress. I believe she approves.
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I guess I'm somewhat "challenged", shall we say, when it comes to tools, because it took me almost three hours to wind that freakin' yarn into a ball, which ended up being two balls, because at one point the yarn got tangled around the base of the ball winder and I had to pull the entire ball off to untangle it and then ended up having to cut it and start a new ball. Meanwhile, the yarn on the swift kept getting caught up under the legs of the swift because the tension just wasn't quite right. I blame this mostly on operator error; however, the jury is still out on whether I like this swift or not. (The ball winder, on the other hand, is fab-u-lous).
This would be my recommendations as to how to improve the design of the swift:
1) Make the post upon which the arms sit quite a bit longer, so that any dangling yarn doesn't get caught up under the legs.2) Drill more post holes in the arms, to allow for more options for tighter tension for various skein lengths. In this case, the farthest holes were too far; the second-farthest holes not quite far enough.
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Finally, apologies to anyone who attempted to read this blog within the last 24 hours and were taken to an "HTTP Error 403" page -- that mother-effin' Blogger had !#$%^&* techical issues again. Let's hope they've resolved all their hardware problems for the foreseeable future. You get what you pay for, I guess....
2 comments:
I've had the same issues with that swift, but overall I'm happy with it. Still have to get a ball winder, though.
Great washcloth!
Great St. Patrick's Day Project! Hope your brother appreciated it. By the way, I truly sympathize with those named after holidays… had I been born only 1 day earlier, my parents were going to name me Holly Noel (can you guess my birthday?)
The ball winder is sounding more and more like a must have. Especially if you buy skeins of woll on a regular basis. Good luck with the swift!
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