Wound Up with Legos

Web developer David North didn’t have a project in angle, going from the top of the ball to the bottom. mind when he bought a Lego Mindstorms set and The bobbin rotates slowly on its own axis to distrib-a bunch of other Lego Technics parts on eBay. He ute each wrap of yarn around the ball evenly.” shelved them, allowing them to collect dust, while Using approximately 120 Lego pieces, two motors, he waited for inspiration to hit him. four AA batteries, and a cardboard tube that fits

“I’d seen a lot of cool Lego projects online, like a around the bobbin to minimize friction, it took North machine that solved a Rubic’s Cube and the Lego approximately 12 hours — and a few versions of Segway — or Legway — but I thought it would be the machine — before he got it right. “Building the great to build a machine that actually performed winder was a fun project and more of a challenge a useful function,” says North, who lives in York, than I thought it would be, particularly getting it to the England, with his girlfriend Mel Martindale. point where it was robust and wound attractive balls.”

Photography by David North

Inspiration finally came after Martindale received More than a year and a half later, the winder is many hanks of yarn for Christmas. “It was taking her still doing a fine job, and, despite the fact that a few ages to wind each one, and it’s tricky to wind a ball gears have worn down and needed to be replaced by hand in such a way that it doesn’t tangle in use.” and that it quickly sucks up batteries, Martindale What she needed was a yarn winder, and he had just never knits without it. the toys to make it with. —Carla Sinclair

North went online to see how yarn winders worked and based his machine on the most >>Lego Yarn Winder: craftzine.com/go/yarnwinder common type, “where the bobbin is angled at 45 degrees and works with a planetary type of motion.