spinning | Plying hack: teapots

I only have three bobbins, which really hurts my ability to have multiple projects on the wheel. To that end, I spend a lot of time thinking about clever work-arounds that are also fun and awesome. I'm also someone who likes having items that are multi-use to keep me low on the stuff scale so I have resisted buying a lazy kate or other very specific spinning sort of thing.

Sometimes, when I want to ply a project, I have zero free bobbins. Like today. So I wound the yarn off one bobbin and put that bobbin back on the wheel. Now, plying from two loose balls is a bit of a pain, what with them jumping and flying around. Lots of people sell boxes and things that you can pop your ball into to minimize the jumping, but I'm not keen to spend that money. I'm also not a tissue user (I switched to handkerchiefs for sustainability and style reasons.) so I don't have a tissue box sitting around. So what is small, lidded, and has a relatively narrow opening that can contain my ball of yarn as I ply?

If you read the subject line and guessed this is where the teapot comes in, you'd be right!

I popped the yarn in my (clean, dry) little teapot (which is very nearly this one, in a dark green), set the teapot on the floor at the correct angle, and plied my little heart out.

This was a great arrangement and it made use of things I already have and use in other parts of my life. (I would like to think it's also just the right amount of quirky.)