DIY Yarn Swift & Ballwinder

Last week I finally succumbed and ordered some Malabrigo Lace yarn. I just had to get some of their pretty colors. But why did I never do that before? They aren't really more expensive than other yarns but well they aren't balled yet. *gasp* Yes, I know I'm lazy but it's not only that. Last year the wonderful Caro gave me some Malabrigo Sock yarn in Tiziano Red and I tried to make my own ball. That's the result:

Bf holding the ruined yarn.

As you can see I suck at that. It took us hours to unravel that- okay actually 2 days speant in front of tv unraveling  instead of knitting. Meh for that.

So after that fiasco I asked Caro how she makes her pretty balls. And she told me about her ball winder and how great that is. So I googled and discovered that a ball winder is freakish expensive (at least for me: 30-40€ that's like 6 books or enough yarn to make at least 3 shawls). So I asked bf if we could just build one ourselves. After googleing at work on how to build your own ballwinder we discovered that we should also build a yarn swift (I'm such a newbie at stuff like this). So that was our plan.

We build both out of stuff we had at hand so it actually cost us nothing. Here's the yarn swift:

Self made yarn swift

The under-construction is a turn table originally bought for a tv. The white thingies are an old and unused curtain rail.. In the middle we cut some of the plastic out so we could cross it. We measured the distance the  pencils should have and drilled some holes in it.  Here is it with some pretty Vermillion on it:

Malabrigo Lace Vermillion 

The ball winder was actually even easier. We found some online instructions that told us to use and electric drill which I found rather scary. But luckily we found some antique thingie in our cellar- a really OLD hand powered drill. So I added some foam distance holders ,which are actually used under chair legs,  to a pencil  and we were ready to go:

Self made ball winder (and yes we're watching Star Trek - The Animated Series at the  moment)

So the winding started and 21minutes later we have a ball of wonderful yarn:

I actually don't pull the pencils out cuz I'm a scaredy cat. But well it's better than my first attempt at making my own  ball.

After accomplishing this I have to say yet again it rocks to live in an engineering household.

What's the best thing you ever build yourself? 

Do you have a ballwinder or can you actually make real balls without it?