If you work with yarn a lot, you understand that a yarn swift and a ball winder are two incredibly useful and important tools to have.  If you don’t have either, you want them.  If you have them, you wouldn’t give them up for NO ONE.  If you have one that doesn’t work very well.. that’s frustration right there.

I have a winder that isn’t working as well as it should. Which frustrates me because lately it has been winding some UGLY center-pull balls.  Lopsided, loose… bleh.  Frustrating!  My swift was made for me by my husband.  It’s not the fanciest, but it does the trick and sure beats wrapping it around my knee or the back of a chair like I used to.

Now if I had my druthers (I’ve never had the opportunity to use that word in a blog post before.  I’m so excited!), I would get a “squirrel cage” swift.  Have you ever seen one of those?  Google it.  And then drool.  It’s a vertical swift and you can attach your winder to the top so it’s one, contained unit.  Stick it in the corner out of the way and super easy to pull out when you need it.  I’ve read countless accounts of people who have these swifts that say they wind all the skeins in their house when they get them, they’re so easy (and fun!) to use.

So yeah.  One of those would be nice.

I saw an electric ball winder at Joanns from Boye and that was mighty tempting.  Electric!  No cranking!  AWESOME.  But then, I don’t trust Boye so much (needle snob) and what if something got tangled?  You’d have a heck of a mess to sort out.  Believe me, I’ve had to sort out some mighty scary yarn messes and that is NOT FUN.  So maybe just a quality winder, like the ones that Royal makes.  Or some of the custom ones I’ve seen on Etsy and around the web that allow you to wind BIG skeins.  My winder is from KnitPicks and while the price was VERY right and it sure beats nothing at all, it makes those darned ugly yarn cakes.  And makes me want to chuck it across the room on many an occasion.  But I will admit it has gotten some VERY heavy use.

But yeah.  Need a new one.  OH yeah.

So if you knit, dye yarn, spin yarn, etc and so forth: what do you use?  Do you like your swift?  Hate your winder?  I don’t want to hear from the people who don’t have either and see nothing wrong with not having either because I can’t relate to you people.  No offense.  But I question your judgment.