A Skeiner

I should have done this sooner.  Way sooner.

The royal profile of 

Casimir the Great

The back side of 

Casimir the Great.

 It is a skeining wheel bolted to the back of the the squirrel cage swift.  It took a most of  a day to make and the next morning to test and fix, but now it works.  This wheel is for 1 meter skeins Now that I know how to do it, I can make other wheels for larger skeins rather quickly.

The really neat thing is skeining off of the little Shaker Rockets.  Set them on the floor and the Skeiner on a table.  I use the spring loaded tensioning device from my large cake winder to put a little tension into the yarn. That is the ticket!

Knitters have their lists of essential tools.  Spinners have their lists of essential tools.  Vertical swifts never seem to make either list.  However, vertical swifts and skeiners form an interface between spinning and knitting.  So, while vertical swifts and skeiners are not essential to either spinners or knitters, they are highly desirable for folks that do both.

At this point, I have something like 24 hours of effort and $20 of materials and supplies into Casimir the Great.  Amos could have made me a better one, but if I ordered it last week I would not have had it in hand this morning for winding skeins, and it would have cost me more. Mostly, this fits what I want to do, at least this month.  And, I will never be afraid to take it apart and make it better.  This is one time where courage comes cheap.

Any tool that can be made, can be made better.