Whattcha Majig

We had a nice Thanksgiving visiting with friends. Lots of kids and lots of great food. Our friends are still active duty Army. Visiting with them always makes me think of our armed forces. These folks and their families give so much for our country, you can’t realize what it takes unless you’ve lived it. I’m thankful for these friends and the rest of our armed forces. Their sacrifices allow me the life I live today.

As I was prepping our part of the Thanksgiving feast, I worked on some yarn projects.  Cook a little, knit a little. A great way to pass the in between time waiting for things to cook.

One of the things I did was tend to wrangling wayward yarn, using a cool tool that I purchased on Etsy this summer. During an Etsy window shopping adventure, I stumbled on the Craftiness shop.  Originally, I was attracted to his turned-wood pens made from rifle casings (bullets). He also had some other very cool pens that caught my attention. Then I saw this thing called a nostepinne. Craftiness has some beautiful nostepinnes made from exotic woods. I do love wood.  But, what the heck is this thing?

The description of nostepinnes reads “A nostepinne is a Scandinavian knitting tool used to wind your own center pull yarn ball the old fashioned, low-tech way.”

Whattcha Majig

My thought was “It makes CENTER PULL yarn balls. Why haven’t I ever heard of this before?” I HAD to buy one, the wood is beautiful. I chose a deep “Purple Heartwood.” When the wahttcha majig arrived, now I had to master the art of this low-tech winding technique. It took me awhile, but now I get it And I love this cool little tool.

OK, so you non-knitters are probably wondering why would a center pull yarn ball be so important and give me such pleasure to create. Well let me tell you… Some of the better yarns and most of the hand-dyed yarns are sold in hanks…not balls. A hank is a big loop of yarn. It is literally impossible to knit from a hank. As you pull a strand of yarn, it gets tangled with the other strands in the hank, resulting in a giant yarn knot. When you buy yarn in hanks, you have to wind it up to avoid the knots. They sell a contraption that will do this for you, but its expensive and its a bulky thing to store.

You don’t need a tool to wind a ball of yarn…but the stands won’t pull from the center. So as you knit the ball unravels and rolls around everywhere with each tug. This provides great entertainment for the cats. Having a yarn ball that pulls from the center allows the yarn to neatly unravel while it stays motionless, eliminating the chasing game.

The nostepinne has been one of the coolest things I’ve discovered this year. Am I a nerd, or what?