Humongous Yarn Swift.

In a past post I showed my giant 5.5 foot swift in action in the horizontal position. It was working fine for me but would take up all the space in the room and I had to put my doggies outside to use it. My younger dog loved watching it and would try to stop it from spinning. I had an idea for making it vertical, but when I went to Home Depot, I didn't find what was in my mind to make the whole thing a windmill.

I went to Google for ideas. Google is a great kingdom of ideas and I found someone who had made the same basic swift, though much smaller and had figured out a good way to make the swift spin. I modified it a bit so I could use the parts I already had, but the basic idea is still the same. And it works great. I still have the way to make my giant loops for dyeing (7 feet tall) and can use less space. The whole thing breaks down into three flat pieces that can stand up against the wall til the next day when I need to use it again.

The whole thing is more than 8 feet tall but has a section in the arm that makes it 7 feet tall if I take it out. So I can use it sitting on the floor, or standing up depending on what I need to do. This picture shows the loop I made for the Lime in the Tangerine coloryway I did. After the skein was dry and ready to hank, I put it back on the swift and wound it onto my smaller swift for hanking. Wonderfully easy.

In other life notes, I got an A on the pop quiz in math yesterday. Anthropology was interesting and Political Science was AWESOME!! My arm feels good as long as I'm hopped up on advil. I'm getting tired of taking that much medication, but if I don't the arm hurts so I'm going to be tired of it for a while.

Punxsutawny Phil saw his shadow today, 6 more weeks of winter. We watch the movie Groundhog Day every year on this day with huge bowl of popcorn. Haven't missed a 'Day' since 2002. We bought it when it came out on DVD in Jan 2002, just days before Groundhog Day. We go through a lot of popcorn. . .

Well time to clean so I can dye!

Happy Knitting and Crocheting!

EDIT: okay so I got little dyeing done. Just one hank, an over dye of the pink Kroy 3 ply that I had. I tried to destash it but had no takers. Now it stripes in pink and lilac. Very pretty together.

What I ended up doing was to mix all my dyes into concentrates. I had 23 Ball canning mason jars that I decided to use to make concentrate liquids of all my dyes. I still have a number of colors that I don't use often that I didn't concentrate, not enough jars. But most of them are now in the mason jars. 16 ounces of vinegar water and .5 ounces of dye. That is a load of dye for that small a jar! So now instead of mixing every time I need to use it, I can just take a measured amount of the concentrate. This does two things for me, the biggest being I can measure how much dye I use. In the future I will be able to recreate color ways that people have liked. I've heard from a number of people when both Pesto and Beach Glass sold on Etsy and they wondered if I could make them again. Unfortunately I cannot. In order to get into a store, i will need to make 4-5 hanks of a single color way in a single dye lot to I need to know how much of a color I use in a color way.

The second thing it will do is allow me to mix colors faster. I won't have to do all the water boiling and stirring. I cleaned out a cupboard above my dryer to store the jars in so they are within reach and not cold in the garage.

So, I am hoping this makes things quicker and allows me to get into some LYS in my area. I just need 3-4 that order each month and the Etsy shop to be able to quit at JoAnn Fabrics. Which I like but I love this and it allows me to be creative.

So, I will post the lilac/pink when it's dry and hanked. Oh, and it took 3 table spoons of the lilac concentrate in the dye pot to dye the 50 grams of yarn I put in it. So I have a bit of an idea what it will take to dye 50 grams.