A New Toy!

Before we get to the new toy -- about eight years ago (or so!)  I posted a picture of the two little boys - then about two and four - enjoying ice cream on their front verandah.  At the end of August of this year, I received this picture..........

...... showing both the original shot and this year's version.  In the first picture Curtie is on the left and Munchie on the right.  In the second picture they have switched sides.  Oh my!  How they have changed and grown over those eight years!  Very different - very adorable!

Now about my new toy!  I had several of these lovely skeins..........

...... of sock yarn in various colours.  I was relying on Poppa to sit with his hands out holding the skein while I wound it into a ball of yarn for knitting.  By the time we did two or three skeins, his arms were quite tired.  He had always been quite patient, but I knew it had gotten to the point when he didn't really want to do it any more...and he had a sore shoulder which made it worse for him.  So, I took the plunge and bought something I had looked at for years, but never splurged on.  I had no idea how it worked, but of course, Poppa figured it out.  Picture?  Ok..........

......... do you see?  You place the skein carefully onto the yarn swift - that is it in the back ground - it stretches out to hold the skein at just the right tension.  The end of the yarn is fed into a slot on the ball winder - the gizmo Poppa is turning the handle on.  You continue to run the handle until all the yarn is on the ball winder.  Then you remove the yarn and.......

..... the end result is this lovely "cake" of yarn.  I also bought a "yarn bowl" which has a slot for the yarn to feed out when you place one of these "cakes" into the bowl.  Perfect!!!

I will take a picture of the yarn bowl when I am using it....right now I have been working on a couple of other projects.