I'm still here!

I'm still alive, I promise! I had a horrible sinus infection this week, but thanks to a Z-Pack I am getting back up on my feet. I love those things.

Not much knitting.. I am making some progress, slowly but surely, on my Orchid Lace Scarf. And yes, PinkPorcupine, I will have pictures soon. :-D

But I trimmed down the yarn winder a bit, and c'est fini:



You might notice there is no treadle. But looking at the picture, I do notice a cat in the corner :-p. I fiddled with the foot peddle for a while, and finally, just to try it out, I took the attachment I had made for the peddle off the yarn winder and turned it with my hand. That part looks like this:



I just turn it with this (kinda like a ballwinder), and I can get a thing of lace on there in 10 minutes. A whole heck of a lot faster than when I was doing it on the swift! A lot less manpower needed, too. It seems really sturdy. I used a rubber band and put a clip on the end of one of the arm thingies to hold the yarn as I get it started. Works really well, and it really speeds up the process. So I just decided not to mess with the treadle and go the simple route. And it works great!

We have power! (Well, treadle power.)

So as you can see, I have made some changes. I took the circumference down some, and I added washers, and a lot of super glue. And foot power.



So this is what the turning mechanism looks like now. I found all of this at Home Depot.. just kinda wandering the aisles. I used 3/4 inch PVC and where I needed to put a nut to hold something in place I would put a nut, some superglue, and then another nut, just to secure it. This will be turning, a lot, so I want to make sure everything is sturdy. The long screw that everything is on is just a 40cent 6 inch carriage screw.

The long rope thing is vinyl covered metal wire that I will attach to a foot treadle that I am making now - out of a metal hinge and plywood. The bottom of the skein winder needs more weight, but truth be told, I will probably end up just putting some books on it.

All in all I have spent $33 on all the supplies. And I think that is all I will need, and it is working well. If the treadle part doesn't work, I will at least have a nice hand-turnable skein winder for my lace yarn. And, being that I am going to place a huge order for that this week, I need it :-D

And I wanted to mention: feel free to blatantly rip this skein winder off. Feel free to print my pictures and take them to Home Depot or Lowe's. Feel free to email me with questions. If you want more pictures, let me know. This was pretty simple to put together, and would have been cheaper if I wasn't going to make it foot-powered - but with the amount of yarn I skein, I need to give my arms a break :-p.

And re: comments.. school has been SUPER busy, so if I haven't been answering your comments, I am so sorry! With trying to keep up on the business and keeping up on school, things have been crazy. I promise to catch up soon. :-)