Don’t get me wrong. Playing with yarn gives me great joy. I love the texture, the sheepy scent, the slight dust of it. I love the whole sensory experience and I am always happy to have more yarn.
This year, instead of having our yarn made into pre-measured skeins at the mill, we elected to have it delivered on huge cones to be made into skeins at home. Matt built a skein winder that automatically spins and measures each skein. Such a winder would normally cost $350-400. He made ours out of spare parts and some pvc pipe for about $150.
But please understand that this is Day 12 of winding skeins. I have rewatched the entirety of Ken Burn’s “The Civil War” (11 hours and 30 minutes, for those counting at home) while winding skeins, and that just covered winding the white BFL and 1/3 of the white Border Leicester. I watched Ken Burns “The Roosevelts” as well. I also watched the whole “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series (23 hours 20 minutes!) while making the natural color Border Leicester skeins and white mini-skeins needed for new patterns that will be released soon.
Each skein comes off the line frequently enough to make tasks more complex than television impossible. Likewise, my hands need to stay clean, precluding anything like cooking or dyeing other yarn. Watching something informative makes me feel like my brain is engaged with something meaningful. I know I’m letting my nerd flag fly by admitting to my preference for documentaries and straightforward storytelling. The current selection of human-failure-intensive prestige dramas don’t appeal: to me, the world has enough genuine sorrow and pain. I cannot enjoy watching people suffer for entertainment. I left human services forever in 2010 for a reason.
I am happy to report that I am winding skeins from the final cone of natural-color Border, and I am really, really happy to be so nearly done. Stay tuned for 2019 yarn!
I sometimes enjoy simple straightforward work like that which allows me to think about other things, but not for twelve days straight! It looks beautiful–I hope it proves worth the effort.
Any chance of getting more info on how the skein winder was made? It’s really awesome looking.
Matt took an electric stepper motor from an old printer. He used a 3D printer and some PVC to make most of the elements to hold the yarn. Then he programmed the motor function with an Arduino and built a circuit board to support the program. He also purchased a cheap display console to show how many yards would be wound and to display winding progress. He’s a pretty tech-savvy guy with a wide range of skills who enjoys a challenge. You should see the automatic drum carder he made from scratch!