Hey! I recognize that! Mine's under kitchen table.

Why does someone need one of these, you ask?

They are specifically for making yarns by on a wheel or with a hand spindle. If you look at yarn from the store you'll see it's made up from 2-6 strands twisted together. This is called ply (like ply wood) and the act of twisting them together is called plying. To make it happen, we twist the individual stands (called singles) in one direction a little bit tighter than the finished yarn will be onto the spools you see there. Then we load 2 or 3 of them into the lazy kate and spin the strands back onto the wheel or spindle, twisting the opposite direction. This sounds easy but it a pain to manage 2 o 3 strands of yarn to twist evenly without a stand like this.

Fancy versions have ways to keep the spools from spinning freely so they don't unroll too much at a time, they are called tensioned lazy kates