Getting the hang of winding skeins

My Christmas present from MOH was a wooden wool winder and swift which took longer than predicted to arrive, which stressed him out more than it should have, and more than I wanted it to too. We knew it was hit and miss as to whether it would arrive in time for Christmas (it didn’t - but it was on its way), but MOH was keen for me to have a present to open, and his backup present cut it fine too.

When it arrived it was beautiful, and needed assembling. With no instructions to follow I got most of the way there, and between us we got there. The wool winder is the darker wood and the swift - for holding skeins - is in the lighter wood.

Spoiler: I haven’t masted the swift just yet.

The pieces of my wooden wool winder, before assembly
a wooden yarn swift photographed on the floor, part on a rug

Once again this year I’d bought the Yarn Advent calendar by Vicki Brown Designs, and I was hanging on to this for it to be my first ‘wound’ wool. And here’s day 1 wound.

my first skein of 'wound' wool - with the wooden winder in the background

With life getting in the way until this weekend, the yarn and the winder had been left to one side. But after a slower weekend and with MOH out on a long cycle, I picked it up again - and cracked winding the skeins. The tension on this wound peach wool is much more tightly wound than I’d previously managed. This was achieved simply by increasing the tension (or holding!) the wool as it went through the guide.

A close up of some peach wool on the wool winder, blurred background
holding a newly wound ball of multicoloured wool, blurred table in the background

And then there was no stopping me - sort of. The swift is going to take a little bit more time and as you know I’m inpatient. But I’m making progress with over half of the Yarn Advent wound - I’ve even rewound some of them so they’re more tightly tensioned. Once they’re wound I know I’ll be keen to get started on my next project - I should finish my last project first though, but the new project call is strong - and making up projects is not my favourite task.

Overhead of my yarn advent box, with over half of the skeins wound into balls

Each skein is tied in three places with a small length of the same yarn, and I can’t quite bring myself to throw this away. I’ve been knotting these together and winding these onto a wooden cotton reel along with smallish remnants from other projects. I’ve no real plan for how I’ll use these but at some point - and I think that won’t be far off - I think I’ll be adding these to my hook.

scraps of wool (used to tie skeins) wrapped around a wooden sylko cotton reel

I’m pretty sure I know how I want to use the Yarn Advent skeins, and before I share more on that I’ll show you the outcome of the previous years’ project.

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Revisiting my Visit Seven from 2020

Back in February 2020 when celebrating seven years of my blog I set myself the challenge of visiting seven gardens that year. At the time Coronavirus was something that was happening in the world, but none of us quite knew how it would go, or how long it would go on for, so there was no indication that my garden visit challenge would, well, be challenged. But as we know, quite a lot changed and pretty quickly.

We did get to visit some of the gardens on the list in 2020, both before and as the restrictions eased, but we postponed our Lake District holiday for a year and so my Visit Seven was also delayed.

We had that Lake District holiday last summer - and it was great - so I thought I’d take a look to see how I got on with my Visit Seven challenge, and I realised that I’d been pretty poor in editing my photos, and discovered - and relived - our visit to Holker Hall this past few evenings.

There were some changes along the way too as we didn’t get to Yorkshire - that will hopefully be in our plans for this year. Our Yorkshire trip was for a wedding which is now expected to take place this year, but the holiday we’re hoping to tag on will be different so it may be a while before I can tick that one off my list. Like the bride and groom I’m hoping the wedding will go ahead - third time lucky as they are both saying.

Taking a look back at my Visit Seven for 2020

The dates shown are the dates of my post, not the date of the garden visit.

1. RHS Wisley, Surrey

  • The Giant Houseplant Takeover

2. RHS Hyde Hall, Essex

3. Houghton Hall, Norfolk

4. Nymans, West Sussex

5. Sizergh, Cumbria

6. Holker Hall and Gardens, Cumbria

  • Discovering stunning plants at Holker Hall, January 2022

X 7. Scampston Hall, North Yorkshire

  • I’m keeping this one on my list, we may make it there but it’s likely that we won’t. If we don’t then at some point I think there’ll be another trip to be planned.

So, slow and steady wins the race right?

That’s my mantra for this challenge clearly! I recommend all of these gardens, so if you’re close to any of them do try and get along and see for yourself. Let me know how you get on.

Two categories and I'm already at 94/100

I mentioned in my last post that I’d spotted @orgjenise’s challenge on Instagram, and that the first category of food drew me in. Over our New Year’s Eve dinner MOH and I had talked about how I’m a ‘things’ person and how he isn’t. I mean that’s ok, they say opposite’s attract but he was right when he said our kitchen cupboards were sometimes a bit of a discovery, so now you can see why I knew I should be in for this challenge.

I should add not all of my items so far have been food, I’ve picked up some other easy wins from around the kitchen and our main living space. Even so it’s a large number of things to identify with such relative ease. The subsequent prompts - especially toiletries and paperwork - are also likely to be, shall we say, profitable.

With life getting in the way the past few days, I’ve not kept up with all of the categories but I’m planning to cover those shortly. What number I’ll end up with I’ve no idea, but I’m confident I’ll surpass a hundred easily, even 200 could be an easy target. Remember in 2016 when I decided to try and get rid of 2016 items? This challenge feels more achievable, but who knows how close I’ll get to equalling this year’s number?

I’m not expecting every prompt to produce such large numbers, for example I’m relatively good at clearing out my purse, but I suspect I could find a thing or two that could be lost, so I might find some surprises along the way.

What I’ve already benefited from, apart from much tidier kitchen cupboards, is a sense of calm and achievement as well as discovering an unknown stash of vac-packed chestnuts, which I don’t think is a bad thing at all. Even MOH’s impressed with how tidy our kitchen cupboards are, though I suspect he’ll be less keen if the challenge moves towards his shed - and even if it officially doesn’t, unofficially it will, though getting him to count could actually be the challenge!

Wish me luck!