Learned Something New: Nostepinne

I was reading the Yarn Harlot's recent post with Christmas gift suggestions for knitters here. One of the gifts she recommends is a "nostepinne" for winding yarn into balls. This was a new one on me! Of course I was immediately intrigued, promptly clicked the link to the Etsy site and ordered a beautiful hand crafted wooden version made from recycled maple, now on its way to New Zealand.

This then resulted in a search to learn more about the tool itself and how it is used. It's clearly much more low tech than a ball winder and swift, but potentially better than winding entirely by hand with the skein wrapped over a chair (my coventional approach when I'm too lazy to dig out the ball winder and swift, which is most of the time). Could be that middle ground, but may require a wee bit of practice.

Turns out it was invented in Scandinavia. The term means "nest stick." 

 

There are so many wood turners here in NZ, I'm thinking I should see if we can get some made out of wood from Struan Farm.