After

My craft room is mostly set up and I love it! I got a desk from Ikea that fits in the corner. It's hard to see, but in the back corner of the desk I have my swift set up with the ball winder on the edge behind the chair. I am also able to keep my sewing machine out. It used to live on the top shelf of a closet which means I never used it. Maybe now that it's more accessible I will actually sew once in a while.

Behind the desk is my bookshelf/yarn shelf. On top of this I have my drum carder, drop spindle and all of the knitting needles that I got from my grandma last time I visited.

The closet has the majority of my yarn. The black container to the left of the closet holds all of my spinning fiber.

It's great having so much room for all my crafting stuff. I could pretty much hang out in this room all the time. :)

Swift

This week I got a new yarn toy. We needed to go to Spokane again this weekend which meant another trip to Paradise Fibers. I have had my eye on a yarn swift, but didn't know how much I really wanted one until I tried to roll a ball of yarn from a hank. Just when I was over halfway through, I ended up with a huge knot and it took forever to roll it. For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, a hank of yarn is basically a huge loop of yarn that is twisted upon itself. For example, these are hanks:

Sometimes yarn is sold in this form, but it is also the way the yarn ends up after I spin it. It needs to be in this form for dyeing as well. Once you are ready to use the yarn it must be rolled into a ball, otherwise it will tangle, and will turn into a huge mess! A swift is a tool that holds the loop of yarn while you roll it and prevents the yarn from tangling. The one that I got is the Paradise Fibers Super Swift II.

I have mentioned the Masham yarn that I dyed maroon in a few previous posts. It got to be the first hank on the swift.

Once I found the start of the yarn, I hooked it up to my ball winder and started winding. As the ball winder spins, it turns the swift and the yarn smoothly moves from a hank into a ball.

And voila! It is ready to be knit!