4KCBWDay6: A tool to covet

The challenge for this day is to introduce you to my tool to covet, but to be honest I have three of them. Let me tell you why.

Two years ago when I was for the first time in the United States and Canada, I had to visit of course yarn stores. Fiber paradise! As a swiss knitter we’re used to industrial produced yarn. In the United States and Canada you have lots of shelves with gorgeous and special yarns and so a lot to choose. When I saw the first skeins in real, I felt in love and bought my first skeins – it was Malabrigo Sock Yarn in the colorway “Solis”.

As we travelled abroad in our rented RV I got an itch to do something with the yarn. I thought I could wind it easily around a wooden dipper, but after a while my wrist started to hurt. Hm. How do you wind yarn in a different non hurting way? I googled it and explored that there are wool winders. With Google I recognized also that there aren’t that many options in Switzerland to buy any wool winders unless you want to pay a lot of taxes by import one. So I ordered a wool winder in a yarn shop in Vancouver. When we drove from the drop off station for the RV towards the airport, we stopped at the shop and picked it up. This wool winder changed my life! It makes the life way easier and it’s a time saver :-)

By winding yarn (and buy more skeins online) it became more difficult to keep the yarn in a safe place where it can’t tangle. As I didn’t want to force my boyfriend to hold the skein while winding all the time, I thought I need a swift. There are lots of different swifts, but I prefered a metallic one as it takes less space to store than a wooden one. Needless to say I had to order it in Germany and a german friend brought it with.

With traveling you need to have your notions always handy. I have a small purse with all my tools in it, but sometimes it’s still to big. My most beloved third tool is the Tool Tin. I’ve bought it last christmas, one for my knitting friend and one for me. I love it because it’s small enough to fit in every handbag and it has all necessary things in it: a scissor, stitch markers, a stitch holder, a cable needle, a double ended crochet hook, a blunt needle, a sharp needle, a sewing needle and a measuring tape. Perfect for travelling or knit in public.

Those three tools make my knitting life so much easier and I would recommend them to all knitters.