Homemade Tools

My favorite tools for knitting are the ones I have made myself.  I have a series of tools I use to make recycled self striping yarn.

I start with thrifted sweaters, usually cellulose fibers and/or silk.  I frog them and ply the resulting yarn on my spinning wheel. Then I wind the plied yarn onto my super skein maker (which is actually a homemade pvc drum warper).  Here it is in pieces.  I'm not going to set it up today, because I know if I do none of my other jobs will get done.  I'll post pictures next time I set it up.  Soon.

Here's the resulting 22 yard super skein (body to demonstrate scale):

I dye the skein with fiber reactive dyes.  Then I wash it out by hand and put it back on my super skein winder so that I can wind it into more manageable sized skeins.  For that I use this, my homemade pedal powered skein winder:

PVC skein winder

Here's the yarn:

Then I knit.