Swift and Not-so-Swift

How did I spend my rainy weekend? Well, doing lots of relaxing things, mostly knitting related.

On Saturday morning, I decided to wind the wool that I bought from Stix and Stones of North Bay at the OHCG Annual. It will be made into this tank - from the summer issue of Knitscene magazine.

As I was winding the beautiful Tanis Fibert Arts hand dyed merino, with the skein around my neck feeding into the winder, my eyes fell on a white box on a shelf across the studio. The Swift that I had bought in Vermont in November - DUH!!!!

Later on in the weekend, I opened the Swift and set it up on my table to wind a few skeins that have been waiting. Man, there's a reason it is called a Swift. I think I did these five balls in less time than the first one for the pattern shown.

If you don't know what a Swift is, it is a holder for skeins of yarn (shown on the left) that helps to wind skeins into balls using a ball winder - shown on the right. There are a number of different types, including an umbrella variety that clamps onto a table. This one is an ingenious Amish design that is easily assembled when you need to use it, and stows away when you don't.

As you can see, there are a number of adjustment options to accommodate different sized skeins. This one is a fully collapsible model - you will see the name and product number in a picture nearer the bottom of this post.
 
Here are the two balls that I will be making into the tank top. If you look at the one on the left, you can see it is considerably larger than the one on the right. The one on the right was wound with the Swift and I'm sure the constant tension as it wound is much better for the yarn.

So here are the goods on the Swift. It is ChiaoGoo and the Item # is 1098. I think the price point is between $40 and $50 which is far more reasonable than the umbrella type. Best of all, the wooden pieces on the right of this picture below fit into the nice tidy box on the left. It's incredible.

I have been knitting since I was 9 years old. I have absolutely no idea why it took me 50 years to get a Swift (and then another 6 months to remember that I had LOL). I guess I'm just not so swift myself - after all, I only got my ball winder about 5 years ago.

There was some actual knitting this weekend too - a Dead Fish Hat, which I will finish tonight and share with you this week.