If I can't show photos of my work in progress, I can at least talk about the complication this organic cotton yarn has brought to my life. For some reason, the more expensive a hank of yarn is, the less likely it is to come in a pullout skein. That means that it needs to be rolled into a ball before attempting to knit with it. To accomplish this, the yarn is untwisted from the hank and then held in place while the winding takes place. This was not a problem when Greg was here -- he could usually be persuaded to hold the yarn looped between his outstretched hands while I rolled it. Now that Greg is out on his own, I need a new yarn holder. I tried several arrangements -- first looping the yarn around large cans and then around two chairs placed back to back. I was making progress at one time by holding the yarn on my feet that in turn were propped up on the coffee table. This looked like it had a chance of success until it caught the attention of my cat, Rudy. It took me over an hour to disentangle my feet, yarn, and one unhappy cat. Somewhere in the mess, I decided it was time to invest in a yarn swift.
My new yarn swift
Swifts date back to the 18th century. According to Wikipedia:
One substitute for a swift is to have someone else hold the skein. This has several disadvantages however, first a willing second person has to be found, and secondly unless the other person has had a lot of practice holding skeins, the yarn winds off a swift much better.
Apparently, yarn-holders like Greg have always been hard to come by. Another knitting website mentions that yarn swifts "
are lovely to look at even when not in use." You be the judge. I suppose I could hang ornaments on it to create a
faux Christmas tree (a
faux fir?) or hang catnip mice on it to use as a cat exerciser.
This was also my first purchase from eBay -- history meets modern technology (and certainly beats my feet)!
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