DIY lazy kate!

I got lots of ideas on how to make my lazy kate from this thread on ravelry.

I grabbed a shoe sized box, grabbed a couple straight needles (see, their good for something) and poked them through the box. I wound yarn onto the removable handles from my niddy noddy and slid them over the needles, voila!

After I plied my yarn, I slid it off the spindle, popped a straw in the middle and popped it back on the lazy kate to skien it.

Meet my kitchenaid ball winder!

Ain't she a bute?

This is NOT my original idea, but I forget which blog I saw it on. If you do a google search for mixer ball winder you'll get plenty of ideas on how to make your own. I made mine with a squirt bottle cap, and an empty flash light and, of course, my kitchenaid stand mixer.

I propped the mixer up, put the bottle cap on where an attachment would go then shoved the flashlight on really tight. I tied the yarn on, put her back down, and turned her on. I went very slow at first, but I think I got up to the 5th speed. I wound the ball straight from the sweater, then slid it of the flashlight and put a straw through it, then put it on my DIY lazy kate and it's ready to ply!

How to use a nitty noddy

First you need to get your hands on one. My hub made mine and it cost us 1.95 including tax. We followed these directions.

After we got it done, it took me literally WEEKS to figure out how to use it properly. I was bummed that I had such a useful tool and I didn't even know how to use it. I couldn't find any instructions that my brain could interpret properly so I'm going to try to write up a tutorial that is easy to follow and hopefully it will help some of you to take a leap in your hobby.

Now let's get winding, shall we?

Disclaimer, I'm holding the noddy in my LEFT hand and winding the yarn with my right. My wrist is going to twist and turn which is hard to show in pics, so when I say "right" or "left" side of the crossbar, in pics it always looks like the right side, but it is in fact on the proper side of my HAND in the position that I started in. Make sense? I hope so!

I've put pink squares on the photos of where you should wrap your yarn. I hope that helps rather then hinders.

first you need to twist the top of your noddy so that it's at an angle like this:


Then pick it up and hold it so the top crossbar is pointing toward you, I should have got a pic of that.

Then hold it like this, grab your yarn (holding it down with your thumb and wrap your yarn around the right side of the top crossbar like this:



Then you're going to bring the yarn down around the right side of the bottom crossbar like this:



Then come back up and wrap around the left side of the top crossbar:





Now bring the yarn down around the left side of the bottom crossbar:




Now back up to meet where you started on the top right crossbar:



Now you've got one complete wrap (2 yards), just continue following the wraps, being careful not to cross it over anywhere. Take it slow in the beginning, there's no rush.

Here's a whole skein wrapped and ready to dye. To take it off, just slide one end off the edge of the niddy noddy and you'll have a skein like this:





I hope this helps and or inspires others to take that next leap in their knitting hobby. Please let me know if the tute helps or doesn't make sense at all.

Happy yarn winding!

My new yarn storage!

Pegboard that fell off my kids toy shelves + unsharpened pencils = the coolest yarn storage solution EVER!