Labor Day

Well, here I am at 3 a.m. again. It's all good though. I'm Getting Stuff Done. I had a productive weekend. University holidays are great because you get three whole days with no interruptions. There is no adminstrative stuff going on, 3/4 of the lab is MIA, and there's very little email to be distracted by, either personal or professional.

But this isn't about work stuff, this is about knitting. After all, next year I don't want to be looking to see what my fall knitting projects were and read some long boring thing about setting up 960 command files.

This week I made 2 trips to Knitorious (maybe that's why I'm in a good mood, absorbing all that happy yarn atmosphere). One to get some yarn for a scarf for a summer student who's been a lot of help to me the last 2 summers. She is off to Chicago and will need it. The other trip was to pick up my shiny new ball winder! Well, it's not shiny but it is very exciting. No picture yet because I've been too busy working on the scarf to wind anything. I think the first thing I wind will be the new Mountain Colors Bearfoot I bought while I was theoretically there to buy scarf yarn. It is a most joyful thing to have 2 pairs of Bearfoot socks in the hand and 2 skeins in the bush. The "New Wool Winder" does have some directions, but nothing as fun as the Amazing Reeling Machine.

Compare:

Swift
"K.M. All-Powerful Reeling Machine"
early 1960's picture of happy woman with the swift
"Directions: When you open or shut it, please give a slight swing, just as you do with your umbrella or parasol."
"Features: It is holding type, and made entirely of metal. The connector is of the utmost convenience and permanent use."
(and etc . . .)

I'm not leaving out any real instructions, like a diagram showing what all the widgets do. But that's fine, since I, raccoon-like, like to explore strange metal objects.

Ball Winder
"How to Use the Wool Winder"
labeled diagram
"1) For the wound ball taken out of bobbin, pick the first end of yarns up from the core of the ball."

More like stereo instructions, and unfortunately not leaving me at all mystified about any of the screws.


I had been resisting the swift and ball winder buying for about a year. My excuse was that I was still needing to get needles fairly frequently and also that I didn't want to spend that yarn money on non-yarn. But the real reason was that someone who owns a ball winder and swift has a Yarn Problem, and I wasn't ready to admit it.

I will admit it now. Hello, I'm the Punctuated Knitter, and I am a yarn junkie.