Swiftly, swiftly ......

 A couple of people expressed puzzlement  about yarn swifts after I posted about the demise of the one that had served me well since the 1970s.   

A swift is a contraption that has been around for a long time - centuries at least.  This 'umbrella' type seems to have been invented in the 18th century, but ones with fixed cross arms are much older.  It's used by textile folks (knitters and spinners) to process hanks of yarn into a ball or cake that doesn't tangle when used.   Weavers whose warp is in hanks can go directly from the skein to a warping board using a swift as well.  A lot of 'big box' yarn is in machine wound commercial balls that do not need this intermediate step, but for specialty yarns, especially hand dyed yarns and handspun yarns (which end up in hanks as part of the processing), it's a necessity.  

Here's what a healthy one looks like folded up for storage.  My new one - right out of the box.  The wooden screw clamp in the middle sets the diameter when it is working and the bottom one secures the whole thing to the table.

I set up on my dining room table.   Swift clamped to one side of the leaf, ball winder clamped a couple of feet away (ended up moving it a bit further over).  Pile of hanks to be made into balls there in the center.  (It's not really obvious that the commercial grey hank is twice as large as my handpun hanks, but it's nearly twice as thick, though shorter.)  

Since this procedure takes up a fair bit of space, I try to do as many hanks as possible one right after another.  Two pairs of potential socks there!  (Plus some left over singles from the spinning wheel on the wooden spool bobbins.   I store my leftover singles as mini-cakes because I only have four good bobbins for my wheel and that doesn't give me any spares for yarn storage.  I won't use the swift for them, but want to empty them while I have the ball winder out.

And away we go, first skein on the swift, cranking the ball winder.  You can see why it's called an "umbrella" !  The ribs expand and contract to fit many sizes of skeins.  It spins around on the center rod freely.

And here's the yarn all caked up and ready to be turned into socks!  I can finally cast on my birthday start.  Three weeks late, but better late than never!  The kitchen scale is out because I used it to divide the commercial skein into two equal balls by weight.