I warp from skeins on swifts all of the time. I purchased a cone winder from Dreaming Robots but while I was waiting for delivery I got used to winding from multiple swifts – my house looks like a ferris wheel farm for Barbies when I’m winding on 4-5 threads at a time.
The cone winder works great but I will probably also continue to use my ferris wheel farm of swifts – a must for silk and my hand-dyed yarn. We got a laser cutter from xTool this past summer and I have been having a great time making things on that. While winding some yard into balls for knitting I was looking at one of my swifts and decided I could make one with the laser cutter. A quick sketch in Adobe Illustrator and I was off to the garage.
Still prototyping – looking for cheap connectors, etc. to make the design quick, easy and inexpensive. When I land on a winner I will probably replace my rag-tag swift farm of many different types and materials with swifts that look like they belong together. I’m an architect so things need to work well and look good in my domain. More on that later.
