Hold a generous end of the yarn between two pencils and begin wrapping.
To the non-knitting audience: some yarn is sold pre-wound into a skein that dispenses from the center, corralling the unused portion into a tidy ball. Other yarn comes in hanks or coils and needs to be wound into a ball before use. We don't want a simple ball because as the yarn unwraps while knitting, the ball tends to spinning away from the knitter (onto the sofa, floor, into the proverbial kitten's mittens). For about $100, you can buy an apparatus to wind center-pull skeins, but I don't knit enough to warrant the purchase. So I came up with this easy way to wind a pull-skein by hand. Which I present to the knitting blogosphere with gratitude for the generous sharing of experience found therein. Photographed in my cardboard studio box with the two flash set-up.
Wind yarn along the length of the pencils. Don't worry about criss-crossing it yet.
Once the height of the ball-in-winding is established, start winding with an up-and-down motion to reinforce the structure of the ball.
The pencils make a convenient handle for rapid hand-winding so I leave them in place until the entire skein is wound.
Voila!
The yarn is Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes Bulky Hand Dye in redwood. I used it to knit the Blanket Coat in Sally Melville's The Knitting Experience: Color and it came out great.
To the knitting audience: This isn't a "knitting blog" because I am a slow knitter. I knit to meditate, cogitate and ponder, to keep my hands busy and mouth firmly shut in meetings, to relax. Photography is my passion and my occupation - I hope you like my work and come back to my blog for some of my non-knitting posts.
Comments (6)
thanks so muc hfor posting this! I've been wanting to try to a center pull ball but can never figure out how to do it!
Posted by Eliea | May 14, 2007 3:26 PM
Posted on May 14, 2007 15:26
Wow, this is great! I hate winding skeins and this looks like a super way of doing it.. I will try it out when I start my next project!
Posted by Kate | May 15, 2007 6:31 AM
Posted on May 15, 2007 06:31
I have tried figuring out written instructions on how to do this for a long time and have never "gotten" it. Thanks for posting all the pictures with this because I've been crocheting for years, but now I can see how it is done and I finally "get" it.
Posted by teeni | May 23, 2007 6:47 PM
Posted on May 23, 2007 18:47
Thanks for the picture instructions!! I do so much better with pictures!! I bough some hank yarn recently and I'm going to try this! Thanks again.
Posted by celticmom23 | July 5, 2007 5:14 PM
Posted on July 5, 2007 17:14
Ingenious. Thanks so much for sharing it with photos!
Posted by Anonymous | July 10, 2007 6:02 AM
Posted on July 10, 2007 06:02
Ingenious. Thanks so much for sharing it with photos!
Posted by Anonymous | July 10, 2007 6:02 AM
Posted on July 10, 2007 06:02