Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 16, ball winder and yarn swift

Okay, it might seem silly to be thankful for a ball winder and yarn swift, but if you have ever tried to wind several yarns for a multi-color project by hand, you should understand this.  It could take hours.  Now I can take yarn in this form:

and turn it into this form:

in a matter of about fifteen minutes.  Total.  Not per skein, but for all five skeins.  And I can do it without help.  Mike doesn't have to sit with his hands up, or unravel knots, or pick up the yarn from the corner of the room after I throw it in frustration.

But what this is actually about, what I am talking about when I am talking about yarn, is that the people in my life support my strange wooly habit.  My mother got my the Strauch Jumbo Ball Winder for my birthday this year.  It is lovely, not plastic (something that I fully support), made in the United States (also fully support) by a small family company (fully support), and quite dear in price (understandable, all things considered.  One must pay for craftsmanship of this caliber.)  And normally my mother doesn't quite go that far for birthdays.  But she listened to what I wanted and decided to go for it this year.

Once I had it in my hot little hands and wound a lopsided center-pull ball, I explained to Mike that what it really needed was a yarn swift.  That the two were really a set, you see.  And even though I had a ball winder, he would still need to hold the yarn, be my yarn swift, if you will, until I got an actual yarn swift.  That is when he asked, how do you get one of those?

Which is why, when I knit, I knit for the people I love.  Because they, too, do nice things for me.  Like get me yarn accessories.