Ever since I bought ItSheKnits a heavy duty ball winder for her birthday years ago, I have wanted to upgrade mine, I have the little blue and white plastic ball winder that everyone knows. I never made it a priority because the little plastic one was doing a fine job, that was up until I wound my first skein of Wollmeise lace. Wollmeise lace is gorgeous, lovely and HUGE, it's 1740 yards, that's right 5,220 feet, a crazy huge amount of string. A friend on Ravelry suggested to put an empty paper towel roll on the center to give mt added height and thus more room to wind, it was a great idea, but the tape that I used to hold it to the winder wasn't the right kind and it was sort of a pain to get off the winder. So I did a little asking around and the two winders that everyone suggested was the Strauch/Fricke Winder or Nancy's Knit Knacks Heavy Duty Ball Winder.
I tried Nancy's Knit Knacks ball winder at Churchmouse Yarns & Teas and a fell in love, hard. They use it in the shop, it's clamped to a cute table to anyone to use, and they said they have never had a problem with it and it worked great. That's all I needed to hear, I wanted one real bad. I did some research on their site and saw that they had made several upgrades to the first version which I loved and redirected some of our tax refund to the yarn ball winder (yes the husband knows).
I know it just looks like a ball winder made of wood, but here is the best picture to compare "the regular winder" and Nancy's.
Here is a picture taken straight on to show how much bigger and sturdier Nancy's winder is:
And here is an aerial view just to show the difference in the footprint and width:
I love it more than I can say, it spins wicked fast, it's almost silent, it's heavy, well made and made in the USA! Now all I have to do is figure out my next Wollmeise lace project to christen it with. I also think I'm going to name him . . . perhaps (Anti)Hank?
