All wound up

Betcha can't guess what I finally gave in and bought.

How much is someone's time worth? I had been winding my skeins into center pull balls by hand. It took me nearly 2.5 hours per 200 yd. skein. I wanted so bad to start using some of this yummy yarn I have, and I just couldn't bear the idea of all the time that winding it would involve... even if I just did the stuff I wanted to use right now, it would take so long I wouldn't be able to get around to knitting any time soon. With the ball winder, 200 yards only took about 15 minutes to wind. There's nearly 12*200=2400 yards of yarn shown here... that would've taken me somewhere between 24 and 30 hours to wind by hand, but only about 3 with the ball winder. So, using a conservative figure, I'll say I saved 21 hours by using the ball winder... my time would only have to be worth $2/hour then for the ball winder to have already paid for itself (mine cost me $38 plus tax and a 40 minute one way drive to get to the store... you can get them for about that from ebay, and a little more from one or two online stores... others have them for way more... the other yarn store near me was charging $12 more... oh, yeah... JoAnns online has them for $40 now and is offering 20% off your total purchase, which would probably cover all the shipping charges).

So, if you have a knitter in your life who doesn't have one of these things... they will love you forever if you get them one.

A swift might be nice, too... but the time savings for adding that would probably not be quite as dramatic, and they cost even more than the ball winder itself.