innnnovation!

My dear readers, I guess all who have made the following experience will be with me - and those who have not, get one!

I'm talking about my ball winder that finally arrived yesterday!

So for years, or at least one year, I was perfectly happy without both swift and ball winder. I mean when knitting only balls of yarn, who needs fancy stuff like that? And then my first lace project came, and with it 400 gr (about 15 oz I guess) of superwash sport/sockwheight yarn came, in a huuge hank. 1300 yarnd of yarn. Yummy. And it took me about 20 minutes to get everything tangled up badly, and 1 week to finally bring it into ball shape. So after that, the forearms of my boyfriend had to jump into the water, making things easier but me also bitchier because of constant yarn tangling because of urges to move on his side. How dare he?!
After 3 rounds of that he was martyred enough to build me a swift - not an umbrella swift, but just two parts of wood, forming a cross, another one like it underneath, the top part rotatable with sticks extending for yarn holding. Cost about 10 bucks, and 2 hours of work. Now things went rather swiftly, pun intended. But still, my fingers always ached after unwinding a whole hank of sock yarn, or even worse, lace weight yarn, and the outcome was rather ... well, bally in the least, offly shaped at best.
And last week, finally, my greed succumbed to my aching fingers, and a ball winder ebayed it's way into my life. Yesterday, the prestine thing, attached to a small stool next to my chair, was first taken into service - and the first hank was wound within 10 minutes, cat action included. 10 minutes. For what had taken me hours until then. So the followiung was that I spent another hour winding, and now nearly all my yarns are wound - sadly, so I had to endulge myself on etsy a bit more, to get more yarn. Just for winding practice ;)

After that I was positively restless, and completed the first snake sock, and cast on for the next without hesitation - no second sock syndrome yet, I just wanna wear them! Next will come Lime & Violet coloured Jaywalkers. YXet without the knitted cast on. Yeah, I know, I've read about it being bad for socks, but as my usual long tail CO was to messy last weekend for whatever reasons, I resorted to this, and it's not too tight - at least the sock stays up. And looks rathger nicely, although the pattern does not look great on pictures. Maybe it will come out better when both socks are finished.