Spindle Spinning the Lazy Way

Over a year ago I bought an interchangeable spindle from KCL Woods, which has multiple shafts that screw into the top whorl of the spindle.  And I have spun lovely yarn with this spindle:

But I didn’t have a Lazy kate to go with these spindles.  A Lazy Kate is a spinning tool that allows one to place the spun singles each onto a place from where you can combine, or “ply” the individual yarns together.  If one owns a spinning wheel, you usually buy a Lazy Kate to put the bobbins onto.

I tried this little combo with a clear Lucite container:

It didn’t work very well – the yarn kept getting caught in edges and on the spindle. The Shoe box version worked about the same. The best luck I had was with letting the shafts wander over the floor, but then the singles would get caught in each other. Plying sucked.
Well, KCL Woods has a Lazy Kate for its spindles, and I finally bought one:

and I spun a couple of sample yarns that my lovely friend Judy (who is in the middle of buying a manufactured home and blogs about it at Wine, Spinning and Song) gave me.   One single was pure wool, the other a lovely wool-silk blend (the shiny one on the bottom):

I put the spindles into the Lazy Kate and made some very lovely yarn!

Using this tool with the interchangeable spindle is now pretty efficient – it saves any rewinding of the cop onto another device, and I can now ply straight from the shaft of the spun singles.  It also make me want to figure out how to transfer the cops from my other spindles onto a set of sticks that can go into the Lazy Kate too.  I will spin more if I can make it more efficient, and spindle spinning is very portable!

The yarn I spun is very delicious in color and feel – I’m hoping to find a tad more yarn to combine with it for a lovely cowl as a gift.