Swift and Winder
If you know me then you know that I’m one of the most frugal people you’ll ever meet. I save everything, I bargain hunt and shop clearance almost exclusively, I reuse what I can, and I rarely buy “luxury” items. Because of this, since 2005 when I started crocheting, I had only ever shopped for yarn at Micheal’s and discount internet shops. I’d only ever used acrylic blends and cheap cotton and wool. While I still believe these are useful and valid materials, I’ve recently branched out a bit into the realms of alpaca and wool lace weight and sock yarn. Admittedly, I’m still shopping the sales and buying the inexpensive brands for the most part but I’ve opened up my options a bit.
By far the most I’ve ever 
spent on yarn was the wool/alpaca/nylon blend Tahki Dove yarn for the Unchain My Heart Tunic at nearly $10 for a 50 gram ball. I looked for a cheaper alternative but nothing else seemed to match up so I ended up searching the internet and finding some on sale (with only 1 color choice.) I would rarely spend $40 on a sweater so spending that much on something that I still have to make is tough (not to say that I didn’t very much enjoy making it.)
Anyway, because I’ve only recently upgraded to slightly better quality yarn, I encountered my first hank which soon became a giant knot. Eventually, after hand winding and un-knotting for what seemed like forever I finally had a usable ball of pretty sock yarn. But I still had another whole hank to deal with…
and then I bought 4 hanks of lace weight wool on sale…
I wound one of the lace hanks into a ball and vowed to never do it again! That’s when I decided to invest in a swift and yarn winder. I looked at plenty of different swifts and watched them in action on youtube. I ended up buying this awesome collapsible handmade swift from Scott’s Mountain Crafts on Etsy.
And then I bought a simple inexpensive yarn winder from Knit Picks that turns all those hanks into neat little center pull cylinders like this:
I don’t know how I lived without it :)
