What I Did Today

Yarn swift in action, half of the yarn wound up, the rest waiting in line, and no cats tangled in it!


Gremlin taking a well-deserved nap. We all know how tough it is to supervise yarn winding.


Megan demonstrating how to drink from the new cat foundtain without sloshing water all over the floor or one's front fur, like some of those sloppy guys do.


More storm action from the passage of Hurricane Noel yesterday in Long Branch.

Last Christmas, as usual, my kids asked what I wanted for the holidays. As usual, I didn't have a clue. Finally, about two days before Christmas, I mentioned that I would like an umbrella swift and a ball winder. Keep in mind we're talking about five boys here. With minimal explanation and confusion, they not only figured out what I was talking about, but they actually managed to find these items locally. Turned out to be two of the best and most useful gifts I've gotten.

Since I was still feeling rotten today, most likely from the same illness that featured yesterday's dreams about delivering babies in France, I just hung around the house today, except for a quick trip to Dunkin' Donuts. Gotta have that coffee. Did a blogslog for a while, checked out Flickr, and then decided to get busy winding up that Philosopher's wool I want to knit.

Before the swift and winder arrived in my house, I used to put on a clean pair of socks, drape the skein of yarn over my feet, sit on the couch, prop my feet on the coffee table, and wind. It would take me 20-30 minutes to wind each skein that way, counting time it took to occasionally detangle the yarn from itself, or the odd cat whose curiosity got the best of him. Granted, it was also pretty aerobic, because I had to keep stretching forward to fiddle with the yarn draped on my tootsies. However, at 20-30 minutes per skein, you can see this was time consuming for 11-14 skeins of yarn. Quite an investment in time. I'd rather be spending that time knitting. Now, I can wind 11 skeins in less than 30 minutes, and that counts the time it takes to detangle a curious cat from the yarn leading from the swift to the winder. Mr. B, Muffin, and Gremlin were today's helpers.

Now I just have to get motivated to start knitting this stuff. It's Sunday night, and Sunday night tv is the pits. Nothing on I want to watch, and I've already watched AMC's Madmen on demand a ton of times; I need to see the first episodes, and they aren't on On Demand at his point in time.