Last Christmas, John bought me a ball winder for yarn, which I love, but at the time, neither of us realized that I would also need a yarn swift to actually use it for winding balls of yarn. The winder cost about $25 but an umbrella-style swift is approximately $80 - $100. I guess it's not terrible, considering you'd probably only buy one of these things in your lifetime...but still, $100? I haven't been able to convince myself that I need one THAT badly. Not when I can still wind yarn into balls the old-fashioned way - by hanging the skein of yarn on the back of a kitchen chair, or sometimes by persuading people (like John) to hold the yarn on their hands while I wind it up.
But then...finally! I saw an idea for making your own swift out of Tinker Toys. Seriously! I thought, well, why not? And this was the result:
Ronan was almost as excited about it as me. Almost. He was the one who added the decorative stack of cylinders to the centre post.
Note: Swifts like the one I made (albeit made of wood and not Tinker Toys) are available on ebay for half the cost of the umbrella style.
