Nostewpi!

Coming soon to a Rumplestiltskein's store near you (ok, there's only one, and it's more like a click away)

Jace, my beloved hubby, heavy metal drummer, dog brusher and occassional knitter has been busy in the garage.

There are a lot of scraps of wood out there I keep bugging him to make in to something nifty. I love nostepindes for winding a ball of yarn (more portable than lugging your ball winder around, and less easy to break!) and a WPI tool.

For those not familiar with either, a nostepinde is an old world tool..the basic idea is to create a center pull ball of yarn by wrapping your yarn around a central core at a 45 degree angle while turning the nostepinde. When you are done, you pull the ball off and viola!

A WPI (wraps per inch) tool is useful to spinners and weavers to determine the guage of yarn. Yarn is wrapped around between the inch measurement, and will tell you how many wraps per inch the yarn is. This is REALLY useful to guage yarn or singles if you are a spinner...if you are trying to re-create a much loved yarn, or substitute one yarn for another a WPI tool will help you know you are creating singles/yarn that is the thickness you require. You can describe everything from bulky yarn (about 9 WPI or less) to lace weights (40 WPI would be some wispy stuff!) Combined with YPP (yards per pound), and skein weight, it is possible with this tool to give a very accurate description of yarn if you can't actually hold it in your hands and look at it.

Sooo...after all this technical schtuff...we come to the point of the post.

I was thrilled when my hubby presented me with not only a nostepinde, but it doubles as as WPI tool as well. Pretty dang groovy and he will be producing them to sell in my etsy shop! (http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6442883)

Mine is made of a lovely dark walnut, the one in the picture to the right is being made out of of maple.

Small enough to be portable, handy enough that you'll never want to be without one!

The handle of the nostepinde has a clearly marked 1 inch area that serves as a WPI tool.

Pretty groovy stuff! Please see the pics below with examples of how the nostewpi is used.

Yarn is wound on at a 45 degree angle while turning the nostepinde.

Pull the ball off the nostepinde and you have a center pull ball!

For meauring WPI, use the marks on the handle.