Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)It can be a little tricky setting this up, but it's actually a very nice, simple machine for hanging on to a hank of yarn that needs to be wound. I had previously used various things (backs of chairs, boxes, or kids holding it in their hands) but there are lots of drawbacks to all those methods. Things get tangled and the kids get bored.
With the Swift Yarn Winder, you find a table that you can mount it on and make sure it'll have room to spin. Be sure it has enough room even if the tines are fully out since that can happen when it's spinning fast and you run out of yarn (more on that below). Mounting it is easy once you find the right wooden screw.
The tines are moved apart using something similar to an umbrella. There's a cylinder shaped block at the bottom that can slide up and open up the tines. Then another wooden screw is used to keep it open at any position. So you let gravity drop it and close it down, then hold the hank around the closed tines. Then lift the cylinder block up and open up the tines until they're tight inside the yarn hank. Tighten up the screw and it's stable.
Then go around and remove any yarn knotted loops that are holding the hank together and find the piece of yarn to start winding. Now, here's a trick that I find helpful. If the yarn is going to pull from under the hank anywhere around, it's going to tend to tangle so just go around and flip the yarn hank wherever it needs it to make it go straight around and not twist.
Then you're set. Go ahead and wind or ball up your yarn and it nicely spins as needed to keep up with you. Here are a couple of other small gotchas to keep in mind.
If you use a yarn ball winder (which I do) to make your ball, it can go very fast. You want to make sure not to stop suddenly while winding because the Swift Yarn Winder may keep spinning and drop off extra (tangleable) yarn.
The other thing is that if you're going very fast and the last of the yarn comes off the tines - surprise - the tines suddenly flair out due to the spinning with nothing holding them together any longer. Keep your eyes away and be careful not to get hit since you could mess up the tines. I generally try to slow down as I get closer to the end and hold an arm near it to give it somewhere to slide against and stop if needed. (If you're winding the ball by hand, you wouldn't have these problems unless you're unbelievably fast.)
These are just the tricks I needed to get over before it worked perfectly for me. I gave it a 4 only because some people may get frustrated with it if they get surprised by a few things I mentioned here, and because the tines are held together by pretty fragile ties (which can be fixed pretty easily if you have to).
The bottom line is I love my yarn winder. I'm now independent of anyone helping me by holding the yarn. I also like the natural wood construction. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes to do yarn work.
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A finely finished hardwoodbirch swift for supporting skeins of yarn of various sizes.19" large size for up to 100" skein.
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