My Handmade Swift

Thanks to some help from Cliff, based on these instructions, I made my own yarn swift. Swifts have gotten very expensive and when I saw the instructions I knew it was something I could do myself and for little money. For the base, I used some scrap oak wood flooring my mom had in her garage. The remainder of the supplies cost less than $10. I already had all of the necessary tools in my garage, with the exception of a wood chisel. The only thing I wish I had in my garage that would've made this project much easier is a bench vice. I managed without it, but if I ever do a project like this again, I will be buying one.

The only problem I had was that the directions state to cut a 1" notch in the center of each piece for the arms. What I forgot at the time is that dimensional lumber is not a true 1" and therefore, my notches were too big and my arms did not fit together snugly. Cliff came up with this modification, using a scrap of paneling I had removed from my family room.


In all, I found this to be an easy project for someone who is comfortable with basic power tools (i.e. a drill) The chop saw made cutting the legs much easier, but could've been done just as easily with a hand saw.

Ramblings

It has been a week since I've said anything... probably because there isn't much to say. Last week was pretty uneventful. I managed to get a little bit of knitting done on my sock (I am only 3 pattern repeats into the cuff) and finally got my second March square for the monthly CAL done.

The weather last weekend was completely crazy. There was wind, rain, sleet, hail, snow, sun, thunder… You name it; we saw it over the weekend. Since the weather was so unpredictable, it made it impossible to actually get out and DO anything. I was hoping to get in a short hike, but no way.

I did obtain all the supplies to make a swift over the weekend. I’m actually pretty excited about this… When I’m done, I’ll have a wonderful tool that cost me less than $10 rather than the $60+ for a commercial one, plus I will have made it myself! Now I have to find the time to actually build it. I'll be sure to write about the adventure when I get to it.

In my family room I have this lovely wood paneling on two walls. We decided that while the floor is in a state of repair, we might as well redo the walls too. On Sunday I removed all the trim pieces. The paneling is glued on, so it should make a lovely drywall mess when it comes off. Then we'll be in for lots of patching and texturing. And while we're at it, we're doing the floor of the entry too, so next weekend I'll be removing trim there (the new stuff we put in back in September) and pulling up vinyl to expose the hardwood underneath. I'll keep you posted on our progress.