Working With Wool and Wood

Being able to use one craft to aid another is something I have always strived to be able to do, this is the basic foundation of living a sustainable life; when you can use your skills to overcome problems without having to resort to buying things. I was so pleased when I was able to do this recently, in a real and tangible way. 

I had been given some beautiful alpaca wool from a friend and wanted to spin it into usable wool. I have a spinning wheel which, after some much needed love and attention, I managed to get into working order again and away I spun! When I’d finished I realised I didn’t have a ‘Lazy Kate’ this is simply a little stand that you use to hold the bobbins full of yarn, so you can ply them together, or wind into a skein/ball. I also realised I didn’t have a ‘Niddy Noddy’, another specific tool used to wind spun yarn into a skein. I decided instead of simply buying these things online, I would make some. 

The “Lazy Kate” is made of some old pieces of oak I had lying around, dovetailed together with some hazel rods to hold the bobbins. The niddy noddy is simply three pieces of hazel which can be taken apart for storage. Both things are nothing special and can be made incredibly easily, but there was something so satisfying and fulfilling about making these things and being able to work this fleece, into useable wool, without having to buy any new tools.

Plying together two strands of Alpaca wool and winding it into a skein