Winding Wool

How do you wind your wool? Do you use a swift, a ball winder or the back of a chair?  This is assuming that you buy skeins of yarn of course. I remember when most yarn came in skeins and, nowadays, they're back in fashion again. Which is where the wool winders come in ...

I have several old wool winders or swifts, picked up in antique shops over the years. Yesterday, I added to my collection with this little gem.

It's an Aero Wool Winder which I should think dates from the 1950s, complete with its original box and instruction leaflet. This tells us that "thousands of satisfied persons are using this aid to better knitting" - so now you know. It also suggests that you can use the winder to unravel old garments to re-use the yarn and that it will take out all the kinks; I'm not so sure about that.

Anyway, it all goes together smoothly and the arms can be extended to fit the skein.

It's a compact little device and would be handy to take with you when travelling. It works in much the same way as the first swift I found - this wooden one.

Again, you clamp the holder to a table and then extend the arms to hold the skein of  yarn.

As you can see, this one has four arms instead of three. It also has a little cup on the top to hold your ball of yarn if all that winding is too much like hard work and you have to stop for a rest.

My other two wool winders are completely different in shape and function and I think they're probably both older than the others too. 

The first one clamps to a table and has two little cages to hold the yarn. These are sometimes called 'squirrel cage swifts', although it would be a very small squirrel that fitted in one of these.

I think this one probably had a cup for the yarn on the top as it looks like there's something missing there. It's a bit unsteady and I haven't used it much.

The last winder in my collection is another squirrel cage design but this one is much bigger and stands firmly on the floor. You can adjust the position of the cages up and down the stand with the wooden pegs that go right through them.

This one's probably my favourite; I like the fact that I can use it wherever I want, without having to find something to clamp it to.

Another useful little device to go with your wool winder is a ball winder. These wind your yarn into centre pull 'cakes' - much easier to knit from.

Here I'm winding the yarn from a ball but you can also set up a table top swift next to the ball winder and do two jobs at once. I bought this little winder from a charity shop for £1 (of course I did, and no, in case you're wondering, I don't have much new stuff in my house).

While waiting to find an antique wool winder you could of course wind your wool in the old-fashioned way by co-opting a willing (or unwilling) child to hold your skein while you wind. My Mother grew up in the war surrounded by female relatives who all knitted a lot and she used to swear that she slept with her arms held out, just in case one of them wanted to wind some wool.