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Thursday, June 10, 2010
And Ball Winder Makes Fun
As I mentioned previously, Johnathan built me a yarn swift. That’s useful enough, of course, if I wanted to knit right from it or something, but that’s not very portable, and since I like to knit, well, pretty much everywhere, it’s not very practical. The practical thing was, then, to acquire a ball winder!
I really didn’t know where to get one, other than Knit Picks, and getting one there has the added benefit of meaning that I can acquire more yarn simultaneously. So I ordered some yarn, a more portable tape measure and a ball winder. The day we got it in the mail, I waited until Johnathan got home, remembering how mesmerized he had been of the ball winder at the shop in Columbus. He called his mom to talk shortly after coming home, and while I worked on some things in the computer room, he had taken it upon himself to unbox the ball winder and wind a ball of yarn. He was so very excited to show me that first yarn cake! He was like a puppy dog. If he had a tail, it would have been wagging.
After he got off the phone, I came out into the living room and made myself comfortable with the camera and took photos of him winding yarn. Bulky yarn was done in a flash! Suddenly, instead of a troublesome skein that I would ultimately end up tangling, it was a center-pull ball. Beautiful! Fingering weight yarn took longer, but the end result was the same; it was beautiful. Lace yarn took even longer for the same yardage and had the added frustration of being very fine and difficult, on occasion, to handle.
It didn’t take long, though, before he had wound up nine skeins of yarn: five bulky, two fingering weight and two lace weight.
I think the most amazing thing about all of this was how much fun he seemed to be having. It’s very utilitarian for me. It means that I’ll be able to just pick up a skein of yarn and start knitting, but Johnathan actually genuinely seemed to enjoy it! And that, to me, means a lot. It meant he was taking interest in a facet of one of my hobbies. For that time, it was a connection we had via knitting. I like feeling connected to my husband.
We did have one mishap with some lace yarn along the way. He used too much tension while winding some black silk-blend lace yarn and it ended up becoming such a tight mass that once the end got pulled inside, it was basically impossible to get it back out. We did end up getting it loose without having to unwind and rewind the ball, but it took a lot of frustration and just a bit of swearing.
The ball winder and swift are possibly the coolest knitting hardware I could have, though. I love how much entertainment Johnathan gets out of it, and it’s honestly pretty cool to watch the ball winder spin around. The cats have been pretty entertained by it as well, but I think their humans get the most benefit from it.
Seriously, this thing is just cool. How did I ever knit without it?
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