Review - ChiaGoo Swift

For my birthday, my mum bought me a swift. Well, she bought it from my wishlist and when I thanked her for it, confessed that she had no idea what it was and wondered why she had bought me a box of bits of wood *laughs*

There's a reason I chose this particular swift - I don't really have room or the right furniture for a swift that clamps and folds up, so this one that sits on the tabletop seemed like a perfect solution. I thought it would be handy to write a quick review after my experiences of using it. As I mentioned - it was a birthday present from my mum so it wasn't given to me for reviewing purposes, I just thought it might be of interest ;)

Out of the box

See what my mum meant? *laughs* Assembling the pieces took seconds, and everything fit together beautifully. The only thing that bothers me, and this has more to do with my personal design idiosyncrasies than anything else, is that the wood for the dowels doesn't match the wood of the base. I know they're completely different woods, but I'm picky like that *laughs*

In this picture, it kinda looks like a candelabra, doesn't it?! The woodwork has been done really well, so all the slots line up perfectly and fit together in a solid and pleasing way.


Features

Ok, so it's a swift, which isn't something that has a lot of features, but there are a couple of touches I liked. First, the fact that the holes for the dowels are labelled with skein size - although most of my skeins are a relatively standard size. The numbers are lasered in too, so they won't rub off.

The other feature (I say feature but really it's just a nice touch) is the pads on the base, which is good as I'll mostly be using the swift on top of my coffee table, which is an antique chest and I'm pleased that I don't have to worry about scratches.

In Action

I've used the swift twice now. The first time was very exciting (so exciting that I forgot to take any pictures). I wound the yarn by hand - I decided when putting the swift on my wishlist that I would rather have a swift and wind by hand than have a ball winder and still have to drape the yarn over my knees!

The movement of the swift is really smooth. There were a few times where it stuck slightly, but that was entirely to do with the yarn catching on itself and not the swift.

Anyway, I then decided that I wanted all the toys, and bought myself a ball winder too:

Weird looking things, aren't they?

With this, I was able to wind the yarn much faster than I had by hand, so I was interested to see how the swift would fare. I wound as fast as I possibly could (I may have gotten a little carried away *laughs*) and I had no issues at all with the swift. It span quite happily, and was quite meditative to watch ;)

And I ended up with one of those cute little yarn cakes...

I smooshed it a bit when I took it off the winder, but isn't it neat and tidy anyway? Of course now I want to wind all my yarn and stack it up somewhere, but I will try and restrain myself. For now, at least *laughs*