Two niddy-noddy's for $1.46

I finished plying the BFL and Wensleydale a while ago, and it's been sitting on the spindle since.

I have a small niddy-noddy, it's only a yard or so. I got it as a gift a few years ago when I first started spinning, and since most of my skeins end up fairly small, I didn't get a bigger one. I just didn't need to. But now I have a few hundred yards of laceweight yarn sitting on a spindle, and using a 1 yard niddy to wind off, well, that didn't seem likely to finish well...

The cross-bars on the niddy come off, it occured to me I just need to get a longer middle piece and maybe that would work. At least temporarily. So, I took one of the crossbars with me to Home Depot and checked their dowel selection.

I was in luck - the 1/2" size fit perfectly! The dowel only came in 4 foot lengths, but they had a cut-it-yourself area set up. I cut the dowel in 3 pieces - 2', 18", with 6" left over. That gives me two more middle sections for my niddy-noddy crossbars. The 2' section gives me a skein that's just over 8' and the 18" one gives me a skein that's about 6'

So I spent 45 minutes winding my laceweight yarn off the spindle (a cherry wood Swan swan from Grafton Fibers and onto my new 8' niddy noddy.

It came out to just over 650 yards of laceweight (gossamer?) yarn weighing 2 oz, or a little more than 5000ypp.

I'm impressed even if hubby isn't.