I’m playing in a swap that the Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild over on Ravelry is hosting…. The Discworld “I’m just sending this box so my partner can have cardboard for their boots and I was guilted into putting stuff in it” Swap. i’ll be posting more about it after i send the box out. but i was just too excited to not share this:
The Discworld Spindle
(i am growing very attached to this. i need to make another one for me very soon!)
1/4” dowel, cup hook, doorskin disk cut with a hole saw, and polymer clay. i used the doorskin* disk as a base to build the clay on and give it strength.
it spins nicely… thanks to the counterweight continent, lol.
*(doorskin is a 1/8″ thick plywood used in the making of hollow core doors. it is one of my favorite art materials.)
we went over and visited a friend from church and i noticed the pretty knit blanket on her couch. i knew she didn’t knit, so i was wondering where it came from. when she reached over to toss it out of the way, i commented on it. she told me that it was a gift from a friend when she was pregnant with her daughter (who is almost 30 and now pregnant with twins.) the friend who had made it for her had committed suicide over 20 years ago. very sad. she really loved it for the cold winter months, but that it was starting to fall apart now. i imediatly took a look and decided i could fix it.
this was the largest area of damage. i forgot to get a completely before picture… but you can see here how i had started to ladder some of the stitched back up… and the finished repair. not as neat as new knitting because all those strands had a crimp to them from years and years of being in one shape… and i couldn’t make them fit exactly in the same position as before… but you really don’t notice when you aren’t focusing just on the repair section.
here was the next largest area of repair. this section had a couple stitches from the middle of this band ladder all the way across the entire blanket. you can see in the second photo how she had attempted to prevent further damage by sewing it up with white sewing thread. and again, the completed repair.
there were a few holes to darn and LOTS of pulls like the one shown below. i used a crochet hook to pull the yarn from the pulls back into the fabric and even out the tension across the rows.. and i used bits from the fringe to darn and repair the holes.
when all is said and done, this blanket will last another few decades at least.
i finally had a chance to photograph my lazy kate system. i think i have it perfected 
i use 2 tension curtain rods in a doorway. i slide my TP rolls of singles onto the lower rod. feed them over the top rod and to the spindle. the top rod helps tension the singles as i ply.
then, to make life even easier, i use an s hook and a binder clip to hold the spindle for me. this way, i can do a nice long draw to even out the ply twist without having to hold it up above my head constantly. i just feed out a section of singles… clip it off… start the spindle spinning and drop it… it keeps spinning while i can do other things for a moment. in fact, today i’m plying and folding laundry at the same time.
another advantage of my system – when i need to stop for a while and walk away, i just hook the spindle onto the binder clip and it won’t untwist. i can come back to it any time i want and pick it up for just a minute or two… and stop just as quickly.
