Spinning Tuesdays: My Bobbin Winder & Fiber as a Fix

I’m a flighty spinner, a process spinner, a starter, a dabbler, a sampler – you get the picture. I fill up, or partially fill all of my bobbins pretty regularly. I’m also not a very even fiber divider or spinner, so I frequently have a fair amount of singles left on one bobbin after plying. I need my bobbins but I don’t just want to trash the leftover singles. My answer to this dilemma is storage bobbins.

 

I recently used some store credit I had on a bobbin winder and I love it. I got a Schacht.

Schacht bobbin winder

I use cardboard storage bobbins that are less than $20 for a bag of 10.

 

Cardboard spools

I wind off  lonely or leftover singles to use for blending or textured yarns. The cardboard bobbins are great because they are cheap (!) and I can write notes on them – twist direction, fiber, etc.

One hiccup I had at the beginning is the bobbins are too big for the bobbin winder. My fix? Fiber to the rescue!  Using a little fiber on the inside of a bobbin makes it fit perfectly.

Using a little top to make the bobbin fit

Put a finger sized bit of fiber on the end of the bobbin winder shaft and push the too-big bobbin on over it. The fiber fills up the space between the bobbin winder shaft and the bobbin.

When I wind a bunch of bobbins at once I find I have to replace the bit of fiber because it compacts and doesn’t hold the bobbin anymore.

 

The fiber stuffing trick works great on my niddy noddy too. I have one that is particularly susceptible to weather changes, when the weather gets cooler, even too much air conditioning and the arm falls off while I am winding. I stuff a little fiber in the hole in the arm and the niddy noddy shaft fits tightly once again!

Niddy noddy fix