Good night, sweet prince. Helloooooooooooooooooo nurse!

Well, it's finally happened. My KnitPicks ballwinder has died. I bought it for about $20 maybe 8 years ago and it has served me well. For Tipsy Sheep alone, it wound nearly 51,000 yards of yarn, and who knows how much more for personal projects.

But something inside it has stripped, its wibbly-wobbly base-bit is slipping, and it's making some truly horrifying clacking sounds that I'm going to interpret as its death rattle.  I'm going to give it a proper Viking funeral in my bathtub to honor it for its many years of loyal service.

And yet something wonderful will arise from this tragedy, as I've just placed an order for a truly magnificent heavy-duty ball winder from Nancy's Knit Nacks.  It was shockingly expensive, but since Tipsy Sheep is now officially a business (I got my license, registered the name, and everything!) it counts as a business expense, which softens the blow a little. And she offers a wholesalers discount for licensed businesses with a Tax ID number, so that helped, too.

The best part about this winder is that, when Tipsy Sheep inevitably becomes an enormous success, I can purchase a power base for the winder that will make it fully automated, so I can wind up to 5.5 yards per second instead of the measly 1/2 yard MAX I can wind by hand.

It will be a few weeks yet before the winder gets here, and in the meantime I'll be winding the rest of Alaskan Ice Tea by hand. I'm sure the pins in my wrist will just love that, but that's how much I care about my amazing customers :)