My dad is a hero. Any of you who have ordered kits from the Mochimochi Shop, or bought them at one of my retailers, have seen how I package the different colors of Cascade Heritage yarn, wound up on little bobbins.

You may not have known (but may have guessed) that for several years I’ve been winding each of these bobbins myself, by hand. Even though the kits require only a few yards of each color, those few yards add up to a lot of repetitive winding time!

In a way, the hand-winding can be kind of meditative, but it’s still really time consuming, and it requires some planning ahead so that I’m always ready for larger wholesale orders. To me, this was an inconvenience that I could live with, as long as my business didn’t grow too much. To my dad, though, it looked like an inefficiency problem that he could help with. So he did.

This is my beautiful custom-made Mark Hrachovec Yarn Winding Contraption. Instead of winding a skein of yarn from a hank into a ball, a la your typical yarn winder, it neatly winds a skein of yarn onto little paper bobbins using a hand crank, a couple of belts, and a clever bobbin clip. It has changed my kit-making life!

It’s a little hard to see in these photos, but before the yarn winds on the bobbin, it goes around a repurposed wine cork, which turns a yard-measuring device normally used for fishing line. Genius!

Now I can wind dozens of bobbins in the same time that it previously took me to wind fewer than ten. And because the yarn goes straight from the swift to the bobbin, the whole process is neater and more organized too.

My dad’s mechanical know-how comes from a lifetime working on motorcycles, airplane engines, various home projects, and clocks. (If you live in the Tulsa area and have a clock that needs repair, look him up!) I feel pretty lucky to have a father who is so generous with his creativity, skills, and time.

Love you Dad!