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.