Winding linen with a niks: archaic Estonian yarn winding tool

After stumbling across this yarn winding tool in the Estonian National Museum s collections, I decided to make one and give it a try I carved it from a green horse chestnut stick and burned old Estonian folk symbols on it. It does a great job protecting my hands from abrasion when winding linen, and it helps me to keep even tension on my thread or yarn as I wind it. This is even more important when I am winding from a skein into a ball. Many more examples of this tool can be found through the Estonian Museums Public Portal Music: Folk Round by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 license.