So. Much. Yarn.

My yarn swift and I spent about 6 hours of quality time together yesterday turning these:

With bonus fuzzy assistant!

Into these:

Tucked safely in a closet to protect them from said fuzzy assistant.

My yarn swift is a boss though.  I spent several weeks shopping around the interwebs looking for one that would expand to the right size to make good dyeing hanks - which, for my preferences, is about 8 feet in circumference.  Most umbrella swifts available only open up to about 60", and while I found some Amish swifts that can hold skeins up to 80", they were clearly all too small. And there was no way in hell I was winding 9000+ yards of yarn by hand around some chairs.

I'm an adult, dammit. I have standards.

After looking through several knitting websites, I finally decided to check Amazon (which I really should know by now has absolutely everything) and found one from a company I'd never heard of before: Stanwood.  Turns out they're an importer who carries bonsai tools, lawn sculptures... and knitting stuff. Interesting.  But their large yarn swift opens up to 8.5 ft circumference and was only $48 (compared to $60+ for smaller swifts from other websites), so I was pretty much sold on it.

And you guys... seriously... you guys, it's awesome.  I may or may not have hugged it when I took it out of the shipping box, and may or may not continue to lovingly stroke it several times a day.  Look at this thing:

My husband and I have side-by-side nerd stations.

Do not judge us, emulate us.

I've never in my life encountered a swift so big, and I love it.  I only have two complaints: 

1. I wish the bit that secured it to the table opened up a little further. Right now it can fit on a 1.5" thickness, which is about 1/4" too small to clamp onto my coffee table so I could watch TV while winding. First world problems.
2. I wish it had come with washers to cushion the moving parts from each other.  Wood squeaking on wood really starts to grate on your nerves after a little while; after more than 6 hours, I was about to strangle somebody.

Overall though, I am quite happy with it.  I might get my husband's former boss, who's a machinist, to make some sort of cranking mechanism so I'm not spinning it by hand the whole time.

And while hubby's out of town on business, I might just tuck it into bed beside me.