No. 1. My house has never been this clean before. This house, with it's hard floors is extraordinarily easy to clean and keep clean. Tidy might be another matter, but hey, tidy isn't clean and clean isn't always tidy and right now, mom would be proud of me.
No. 2. This house had no decent place to attach my ball winder where it worked the proper way.
Almost a deal breaker. And I like it here. Since arriving here, winding yarn has been a sort of pain. I have had to move furniture, or wind in weird places or off the sides of bookcases, none of which are the nicest easiest places to wind yarn. I needed to do something but I was never sure just what.
I thought about making something like this. The first two rows of photos are marvelous examples of what I was thinking. But, and this is a serious but, that set of legs costs money and I didn't really have a place where that set of legs would fit. I didn't see how that kind of station would work with what I already had either.
I have a swift that Brian built for me and no matter how unusual it is, it was what he envisioned after I explained what I needed. I am not about to get rid of something he made to purchase something with no meaning at all. My swift, won't fit on a stand like any of those shown.
My swift is also a pain to store. I never told him that. The base used to sit in a permanent cross but I took that apart a while ago, opting for mildly less stable performance but much much easier storage. It breaks into flat pieces of 1 x 1 and smaller, but it still was four long pieces and then the short posts that the yarn wrapped around. The pieces sat in the corner of my living room for the last year, sort of out of the way, but always, in every way, in the way, falling all over every time you blinked.
And then there is the ball winder. I have many places it fits, but every single one of them is backwards from what is optimal, so winding wasn't in any way a pleasant experience, just a chore to be done and I like winding yarn.
Resolution jumped up and bit my in the face today.
I recently replaced this unit, your basic el cheapo cube unit, with something that had more shelves, in my laundry, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this unit. It was in the way the last week or so and I was going to put it in the upcoming spring garage sale. I couldn't think what I would use it for anymore.
I was sitting here looking at yarn, and thinking about stuff, and it popped my head that maybe it could hold the ball winder. Maybe it needed to be my winding station. I checked to see if the ball winder would mount firmly on it and yup. It did.
I took one of the shelves and drilled holes and screwed it into place at the bottom of the unit to make a bin to hold things in place at the front. I tucked the other shelf at the back of the unit, to help keep things stable, after I discovered my swift is too tall to be able to make use of a shelf.
And voila, a solution to two very irritating problems was born.
Everything fits in quite tidily and even better, I had the perfect place to tuck it between the door and the sewing station in my study.
I was delighted and thought to give it all a test. I 've had the yarn out for my Lakeur sweater for a while now. I'm thinking of knitting it as my Ravelympics project and the games are coming up fast. Some of the yarn needed winding.
It worked great. Swift on the floor works well enough, and knowing I have a place to put it after doing so, makes it all the better. The old cubey thing is sturdy enough to get the job done. 3 skeins wound. Good to go.
So here we are, yarn laid out and I am sitting here, sipping my wine, making up my mind exactly how I am going to knit this range of colours and yarns.
And that is what I call a successful day.
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