That I got in the mail this week. I used a Christmas gift certificate to buy it, so technically it was a Christmas present.

This is a yarn swift. See, some yarn comes wrapped in circles called “skeins”. These are really obnoxious to wind into balls because they like to tangle in on themselves no matter how much you try to keep them lying flat. In steps the swift that holds the circle tight and spins around to keep the yarn untangled.

Working with the yarn winder and swift is fun. In fact, it is so much fun that I am planning to keep my “stash” yarns in skeins to wind them when I need them again. That and I read that it is more gentle on the yarns. When they sit around wound into balls it can stretch the yarn out and cause shrinking when you wash what you have knit. I tried to find where I read that, but I don’t feel like doing more than five minutes of research right now.

I can also mark down approximately how much yardage I have left by counting how many times I wrap the yarn around the “niddy-noddy” to make the skeins. Makes it much easier later to know what I can make out of the yarn.

The swift is supposed to go on the side of a table, but the desk in my room is larger than the opening at the bottom of the swift. However, it fits perfectly on the arm of my chair as you can see in the first picture. That does make it the perfect height to stand next to while winding the yarn.

Everyone has something that other people think is boring that they love doing. I also love licking envelopes. I actually like the taste of envelope glue. What random things do you get excited about doing that other people think are strange or boring?