Life at campchaos has been spinning quickly and the last few weekends have been full of cool nights in the tent, duck tours with Elvis, puppy adventures, a weekend upta camp and the parking lot that is I-95 Southbound on a summer Sunday. We've managed to stay in place for a weekend and I was finally able to tackle some yarn that's needed to be wound. Dave helped me out on Friday night and held the skein and suffered through 400 yards of sock yarn. He was a good sport but I could tell that he'd rather be petting the pups instead of watching yarn slowly spin.
The next night I searched for alternatives to aid in the project and found this site, which used old school Tinker Toys to make a DIY Yarn Swift. I hadn't been a huge tinker toy fan as a kid but my sister loves them. It just so happened that Dave had a box of tinker toys from 1983 laying around so he blew off decades of attic dust and quickly went into construction mode.
We referenced the how to but also modified the design here and there. Dave even had a little Tinker Toy Guy that became the center piece of the swift.
We started out with a small base and tested a good size skein of yarn.
The moment of truth... would I end up with a ball or a tangled mess?
Between my hand crank ball winder and the tinker toy swift we made short work and I was quickly able to wind a half dozen cakes of yarn before taking the swift apart and stashing it in my knitting bag... for you non-knitters out there- a normal knitting swift is a really cool umbrella like contraption that retails at least $65. That's a lot of yarn back in this knitter's budget, plus the tinker toys break down for easy storage. Now I can get back to my knitting...
Here's the swift in action after a couple of design modifications.
Our big home improvement project for the Labor Day weekend was for our truck which at times has seemed like home. We framed out a big U shape with 2x12" boards and used a large sheet 6'x4' of 3/4" plywood to top it off. We then built a drawer to fit inside the U. This rectangle was made from 1x10" pine and 1/2" sheet of plywood for the bottom of the drawer. The two pieces are independent, the first larger one slides in and comes just over the wheel wells and the second piece, the smaller drawer slides easily. The result is a sturdy contraption that we can take in and out of the truck easily to sleep on and w/ ample storage space. Our cushy sleeping pads and Chaos's dog bed will ensure many good nights of rainy or cold camping.
We even reinforced the structure with some me tel L joints and sanded the edges so one one (or the dog) gets any splinters. We got to play with our growing collection of power tools and are happy to report no lost fingers or tails and we are still talking. It's a pretty simple design we borrowed from others~ thanks to Dano, Tim & Ethel!
We framed out a big U shape with 2x12" boards and used a large sheet 6'x4' of 3/4" plywood to top it off. We then built a drawer to fit inside the U. This rectangle was made from 1x10" pine and 1/2" sheet of plywood for the bottom of the drawer. The two pieces are 