DIY: Yarn Swift

My knitting “hobby” is slowly becoming a full time activity. What that means is a box full of overflowing yarns, needles in all possible shapes and sizes. What it also means is sore wrists from winding all those yards and yards of yarns into balls. When I can’t order yarn from US, ordering a yarn swift is totally out of the question. The yarn winding pain is felt more by my husband because he volunteers (no, really he does) to do it. I bought a bag full of yarn and also received RAK packages, so more winding for him. He anticipated how will wrists will feel in the coming days and set out to make a yarn swift for himself.

He looked at pictures of the actual swift, the DIY ideas and then he knew what to do.

What you need:

Two aluminium cloth hangers
Adhesive/Insulation tape
An empty bottle
That’s it!

What to do:

Straighten out the hangers so that they turn into straight rods. Each rod will be around 37 inches long. Approximately at the center you bend each rod so that there is a circle at the center and two end of the rods at 90 degrees. Each arm should be 13.5 inches. Now you have two pieces which look like this:

You place both the pieces so that the circles coincide and you have the four arms meet at right angles. Secure with adhesive tape. Your basic structure is ready.

You bend each arm in a Z shape. At 5 inches from the end, bend the rod until the angle is 50 degrees. At 2.5 inches from the end, you bend the arm again in the opposite direction to get a Z shape. Like this:

You mount this on a bottle (filled with water) and it is all ready to use. See it being used here:

The result:

I thought the swift will be wobbly, but it is surprisingly stable and the rotation is smooth. My husband is mighty happy with this one. His eyes are set on a niddy noddy which he agrees is more complicated than a swift.

Disclaimer: No, the yarn swift is not capable of turning a pink yarn into a grey one.