More Introductions

While I'm doing introductions, here are some of my everyday tools.


This is my family of Niddy Noddies:
A niddy noddy is one of those marvelous feats of remarkably simple design. I made these three myself. I must say, I am fond of them. And I use them all the time.


These are the tools I use to wind yarn off the bobbin to make skeins.


Macro Noddy--the big one--makes a 2 metre skein. The "stick" part is about 50 cm long and a skein is made by winding yarn around all four ends of the "arms". Four by 50 cm is 2 m. So it's also a primitive measuring device.


I use this for most of my yarn for projects--a 50 g skein or more is great. Anything more than 100 g and it's getting pretty bulky. But then my regular bobbins hold about 100 g and that's a lot of spinning.

Midi Noddy--this middle sized one--makes a 1 m skein. This is great for samples and experiments and left over bits.


Mini Noddy--the baby of the family--makes a 50 cm skein. I made this one to wind skeins of hand-spun silk for embroidery . Fortunately a little bit of hand-spun embroidery thread goes a long way. So a few metres wound on this makes a lovely little skein. I have a dear friend who loves to do silk embroidery and I like to treat her to a hand-spun skein or two every now and again.

Just to get a sense of proportion, here's mini-noddy in my hand: