An Epic Move and a Skeinwinder

WE DID IT!!! Our house sold and we are now drinking champagne as I post in Cannon Beach, Oregon. OK, I need to back up a bit. I personally know that there have been folks that have had a far more epic move than we have but moving after living in one spot for 22 years is always a huge undertaking. We have been paring down and packing for quite a while but when the sale looked like it was going to actually go through this time, the packing got serious. The house closed on Thursday and we signed the papers on Tuesday. We managed to pack what was left from the purge into one big Penske rental truck and a U-Haul trailer. We ended up loading a bit later into the night than we thought so we left for Ashland, Oregon later than we planned on Wednesday morning. We drove for 12 hours in tandem with me driving our pickup with a U-Haul trailer and my husband driving the big Penske. We spent Wednesday night in Grants Pass, Oregon about 30 miles north of Ashland and drove to a storage place on Thursday. The manager was out doing errands so we didn't get to start unloading until late in the afternoon. We finished unloading our worldly goods about 7 pm and left off the rental trailer and truck. Needless to say it was quite late when we finally headed back to our trailer 500 miles away in Washington State. We ended up driving through the whole night.
Now, when we were younger we could do that and shake it off but, alas, we are middle age at the moment and the body doesn't recover quite as fast! After a week of being short on sleep, it has been pretty hard to recover from the hard physical work of loading and unloading, a long drive, and the mental strength that has been required. We put off moving our trailer for a day but yesterday, after another very long drive, we arrived at Cannon Beach for the first stop over on our way to Ashland. We will be spending the summer before school starts resting up along the Oregon coast. It is beautiful. I will be taking pictures tomorrow to post really soon.
In the meantime, we sleep a lot. I have absolutely nothing planned for the week except to eat, sleep, walk the beach, and, ahem, enjoy time with my husband.
I think I can tell you now that all the stress and exhausting work will be well worth it.
Now, to change the topic a bit, I promised last post that I would show the homemade skeinwinder my husband made for me several years ago.
These pictures were taken after the winder had been packed, but I was able to haul it out to take a couple of hasty pictures. The picture on the left shows the full winder. I clamp the bottom of the winder to a table. The metal plate is attached to two arms that have dowels with knobs on the ends to wind the yarn on. I can unscrew the dowels and move them to the holes you can see toward the middle and I will get a one yard skein. The two yard skein works best for most of my purposes and I can get that with the dowels placed at the end of the arms.
I have a dowel with a screw in the end which I insert in the notches in the metal plate to turn the winder which ever way I wish. I can get that baby really humming too! One of the knobs on the end of the dowels unscrews so I can pop the finished skein off.


The picture on the right is a closeup of the turning mechanism in back. There is a pulley with a ball bearing insert that is screwed onto the back mount and the metal plate is bolted through the center of the winder arms so that they turn freely.
I hope this makes sense. It can be a bit challenging to describe. I guess the best I can do is to perhaps give everyone a general idea so that if they wish to make one themselves they can have a good starting point. I will admit, I love tinkering and building tools to use in my studio.
I keep count of the number of turns by simply marking one arm of the winder with a red "X" and counting every time it flashes by. I sometimes use a tie to tie up every 50 or so threads when making larger skeins of fine threads. Low tech yes, but sometimes that works the best.
So, Priscilla, I hope this helps a bit if you haven't already solved your winding needs. I find it helpful when I need to make my own tools to look at similar ones online. That reminds me, I need to make a shuttle bobbin winder. I have always used my AVL electric pirn winder but that won't work in our trailer (no room!) and I don't need that much power for winding bobbins for the Jane loom. I am thinking of a simple attachment for a small power drill...
More from Cannon Beach soon! -Renee