Wool Yarn Ball Winder Repair

I took my DIY Wool Winder and DIY Umbrella Swift to the Yarn Festival at the LYS last Friday. The Yarn Campers were showing off all their work from a week of Yarn Camp. Not only had they learned how to knit, but they also learned felting and hand-dyeing yarn as well. They had some beautiful work to show.

My wool winder broke while winding one of the Camper's hanks of hand-dyed yarn, so the LYS's shop winder (a little Royal) was used to finish the last couple of hanks. Before my wool winder broke, all the Campers got a chance to crank it for awhile. My wool winder is brightly painted, and all the gears are exposed, so it is fun to watch while winding yarn.

The wool winder broke for the second time in the same place: where the tube connects to the 10-tooth gear. The first time it broke was shortly after building the prototype. I had only glued the tube to the gear blank. I repaired it by glueing and nailing the tube to the gear blank. The second time it broke in the same place, so now I know that this is a stress point in the machine. I repaired it the second time by drilling three holes equally around and through the gear blank about an inch into the tube. Then I glued the tube to the gear blank, glued wooden dowels into the three holes, and added a drop of glue to the nail holes, and re-nailed it. When the glue dried, I put it back together. This is the fourth time I've taken the wool winder apart and put it back together again. Each time, it runs a little smoother.

The next time it breaks, I think I'll sink the tube into the back of the gear blank, then glue and screw it together. To do that, I'll have to make another longer tube. I put a sketch of my suggested method of repairing this part on this page of the wool winder tutorial

Wool Yarn Ball Winder

Instead of constantly updating the wool winder information on the Animation and Automata blog, I decided to make a static web page for it: Wool Yarn Ball Winder. There is also a page for the Umbrella Swift.

That site has more detailed information, and it will be easier to update. So far, I have a Rough Draft finished and uploaded. I'm not a technical writer, so trying to explain how to make a Wool Winder is actually quite difficult. Part of the difficulty stems from trying to make the instructions generic, so that people can make a custom wool winder that does the work they want it to do, rather than slavishly copying the 3:1 ratio wool winder that I made.

I'm also trying to make some new drawings that show more details. I'm doing all the drawings using the KolourPaint program on my Debian GNU/Linux computer. I will continue polishing the tutorial until it reaches a finished state. Anyone with questions can PM me on Ravelry.

Learning to Knit

Unlike many other knitters who were taught how to knit by someone in their family, no one in my family knitted. Therefore, I didn't have a long-neglected knitting basket of knitting needles and wool yarn in the attic that I could start with. The sub-title of Wendy Knits is Adventures with sticks and string., and I took that to heart.

I found some bamboo chopsticks from the local Chinese Take-out, sharpened the points, and sanded them smooth with some sandpaper. I also found a remnant ball of jute twine. Sticks and string, right?

The next step was to learn what to do with the sticks and string. That's where my desktop computer and a broadband connection to the Internet came to the rescue. I learned how to knit by watching video tutorials at KnittingHelp.Com and Google Video. More often than not, Google Video pointed me to video tutorials at YouTube.Com.

Anyway, this is what my very first attempt at knitting looked like, with two bamboo chopsticks and some jute twine.



My next knitting experiment was to try to knit circular, using Double Pointed Needles. So I found some more bamboo chopsticks, sharpened both ends, and sanded them smooth. I followed online tutorials to learn how to cast-on, divide the cast-on stitches onto three dpns (the knitting abbreviation for Double Pointed Needles) without getting the stitches twisted, and join the stitches to get ready to start knitting in the round.



With that kind of success, I was ready to really start learning how to knit socks. I emailed an acquaintance that I knew, who knitted, and attached the above photos, along with a long explanation of how I wanted to learn how to knit socks. I was so excited, I just had to tell someone! The next day, she came by the house and dropped off a bag of knitting needles, wool yarn, and a book. My first knitting gift! (Thank you SO much, Ann!)