Friday, November 27, 2009

I Like Making Things...

So, I'm spinning. I have even MADE REAL YARN. I am so impressed with myself :-)

Finished one ounce skein

Anyway, Yarn Skein One was done up on a niddy noddy made of TinkerToys. Hey, I needed one, and we had them hanging around in a closet (Aside: we also have Lego and Duplo bricks, Brio trains, and wooden blocks. I keep them around for visiting small people. Or big people who like to play with Lego.)

Wound up on the niddy-noddy

That niddy noddy was good for one go around. I was skeining up some yarn last night, and it just really did not want to stay together. I could buy a nice wooden niddy noddy, but it would take long driving (Newberg, Carlton), or ordering online (waiting....). And it would only make one skein size.

Enter the PVC niddy noddy. All credit goes to The Anticraft, which provided the instructions and parts list.

A walk to Home Depot, where there were approximately 2 sales people for every customer (Black Friday, big day, all hands on deck), and one attached himself to me, so I read off my parts list and he helped me find everything. He was not inclined to cut it up for me (foo), so it was either going to be the hacksaw at home, or investing in a PVC cutter. Now there are other people who cut up PVC at our house a lot more often than I do, so I bought one. Plus I can cut it up now, too, should I have the overwhelming urge to reduce a 10' length of PVC to its component molecules. We did cut it into 2 pieces, which made the walk home easier.

Pedestrian aside: Between my house and Home Depot, a distance of, oh 1.5 miles, there are darn few sidewalks, narrow streets, ditches, poor sightlines... Walking holding 2 long pieces of PVC does cause motorists to notice. No one interfered with me in the crosswalks, or buzzed me on the walk home.

Sanded all the printing off the PVC. I started with coarse sandpaper and a sanding block, then finished it with very fine sandpaper. Wiped everything off, went inside, measured, and cut. I also wrote the resultant skein length on each body section, so I'd not have to look it up. By swapping out the body section, I can make a skein of a different diameter. One bit of clarification on the instructions - they call for 7/8" O-rings. By that they mean 7/8" OD (outer diameter) O-rings.

The completed niddy-noddy

Pics detailing the construction.

2 comments:

twinsetellen said...

Awesome. Simply awesome. In a fit of ambition I bought a bunch of PVC to make hoops for garden mesh. This never actually happened. I could make niddy noddies for everyone I know who spins now!

lynnef said...

you could, indeed. Parts cost for the resultant two niddy noddys (I did not have enough PVC for the 2 meter skein body part; I can live with that) was $6.37 TOTAL.