Jul 14th, 2008
DIY knitting tool
When I first started knitting, I did what pretty much everyone else does: I made garter-stitch scarves. After three of ’em, I decided to branch out. So I made a garter-stitch blanket for Sylvia.
And then I got the brilliant (ahem) idea of knitting a ruana for my mother-in-law. I had recently acquired Sally Melville’s very excellent The Knit Stitch
Melville annotates this pattern with “Lots of knitting”—and boy, she’s not kidding. It’s a lot of garter stitch. As I neared the end (after two Christmases had passed), I wasn’t really happy with how this thing looked. But because I was near the end, I doggedly continued. Some part of my brain thought, “If I can just finish this thing, then some miracle will happen, and it will actually look good.”
No such luck. I finished everything but weaving in the ends, then put the ruana in a basket on top of my armoire. It sat there for three years, a failed knitting project in every sense of the word. Finally, I decided to frog it and use the yarn for something else. But the thought of wrestling with a big tangle of yarn (and I knew I would be unable to frog this and get it into balls or skeins without creating some ginormous mess) made me pause.
Then I learned about the niddy noddy, a tool used to wind yarn into skeins. Then I found an excellent online tutorial for making my own—out of inexpensive PVC pipe. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I set up a little workshop on the front porch.
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Look! I HAS MAD SKILZ! See how a few deft cuts with a hacksaw (followed by a bit of sanding on the edges—don’t want to snag the yarn!)…
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…yields a niddy noddy that becomes flat for storage and cost about $2 to make!
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I was so pleased with myself (and had plenty of leftover PVC, since the store sold it only in ten-foot lengths) that I made another one for a friend. (There was even three feet of PVC left after this. It has been turned into a pole for Sylvia’s pirate flag.)
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The ruana is now frogged and all the yarn tidily wound into very curly skeins that make me think of poodles whenever I look at them. But all I need to do now is soak the yarn to get it all wet then hang it up to dry (with a can of soup acting as a weight at the bottom to stretch out the kinks). And then I’ll have ten skeins of Nature Spun worsted (in the Grape Harvest color) at my disposal. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with it…
5 Responses to “DIY knitting tool”
What is it about we knitters that we all hope for the miracle at some point?! I’ve done it myself more than once.
I have a very similar niddy noddy! I’ve tweaked the center piece so it now makes one yard hanks. Jeanne has an assortment of center pieces to make hanks of different lengths.
Careful with that can of soup…you may want to just soak it a bit and hang it, that might be enough to get the kinks out. You don’t want to over-stretch the yarn.
I haven’t had a chance to use the niddy noddy you made me yet! But I’m sure I have random things that need frogging!
Nice! I came across a method for making center-pull balls of yarn without a ball-winder recently.
Ah, the joys of the Internet!
Youz wikked smaht! Dang, a hacksaw–I’m impressed!
Glad to hear Sylvia has turned to a life of piracy. Hope she shares her haul with you.