Round and round..

Spent a lovely lazy day in the sunshine with my girls today. They had an extra day off school and I'd booked it as leave from work - bliss!

I managed to get a little knitting done in the garden on Fortune's sleeve and I did intend to seam the right shoulder tonight but it just kinda didn't happen. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.

I did get to have a play with the niddy noddies on loan from my friend Fiona tonight.
I've never used a niddy noddy before, and had a 500g skein of what I'm guessing to be sock-weight wool to divide up into smaller skeins - with a view to dyeing them of course.

This was the progress when I was forced to take a break for a couple of reasons. Firstly my arms were getting very tired; if there's much of this to do in the future then DH can have a go at the magical contraption he's been planning in his head for me.

Secondly I found that after winding my second skein directly from the large skein on my swift I erm.. well.. I couldn't get it off the niddy noddy. It was too tight and I hadn't discovered that the one side was dipped lower to get the yarn off. Doh!

DH sorted it out for me of course. Don't worry Fiona, the niddy noddy is still intact.

Although the equipment is beautifully made, I'm finding the winding process a bit weird. It's not at all intuitive yet which way to move my arms to get the direction right, and I have to watch the whole thing. I'm hoping that will improve with practise!

Anyway since this learning experience, I've wound the remainder of the wool into centre-pull balls and I'll wind them onto the niddy noddy from there tomorrow night.

I really want to get dyeing now!