With a little time and no tools at all, you can wind the best center-pull balls around.
With a little time and no tools at all, you can wind the best center-pull balls around. <a href="https://farmfiberknits.com/wind-a-center-pull-ball-by-hand/">Continue reading.</a>
Kate indulged in a bit of winding on a busy day. Just look at this luscious skein of Peter Pan & Fam, grown and botanically dyed at Wing and a Prayer Farm. Photos by Kate Larson
Most of us wind our skeins of yarn into balls before we begin a new project, and there are several ways to do it. Winding by hand is not only meditative and relaxing—it can also put less stress on the yarn because you can adjust your tension.
Why Wind By Hand?
After I learned to hand-wind center-pull balls from Nancy Bush in a sock workshop two decades ago, I’ve never looked back. I’ve wound yarn on planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention barns and pastures!
I sat down for a few minutes during this busy day to indulge in winding a skein that I don’t have time to knit right now. Just handling this speckled beauty (botanically dyed speckles, no less!) from Wing and a Prayer Farm lifted my spirits.
Elastic yarns, such as this wonderfully crimpy yarn spun from Cormo fleeces, can get a bit stretched as they are wound into balls (sometimes called cakes) using a swift and ballwinder. When using a ballwinder with a yarn like this, I often wind once from skein to ball, and then I rewind the ball again to relax the yarn. When handwinding, I can wind more loosely the first time.
Think hand-winding is slow? From start to finish, I wound this 250-yard skein in just about 10 minutes. And what a quiet, relaxing 10 minutes it was as I admired the sweet speckles and mused about how they would look knitted.
To start, open the skein, give it a good snap to help loosen tangles.
Step By Step
The first step is to open the skein into a loop, give it a couple of snaps to loosen any tangles, and lay the skein across your knees or hang it over the back of a chair. Untie or cut the ties to find one end. Note: I am right-handed, so left-handed knitters might reverse these instructions.
Lay the end of the yarn in the palm of your passive (nondominant) hand.
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Most of us wind our skeins of yarn into balls before we begin a new project, and there are several ways to do it. Winding by hand is not only meditative and relaxing—it can also put less stress on the yarn because you can adjust your tension.
Why Wind By Hand?
After I learned to hand-wind center-pull balls from Nancy Bush in a sock workshop two decades ago, I’ve never looked back. I’ve wound yarn on planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention barns and pastures!
I sat down for a few minutes during this busy day to indulge in winding a skein that I don’t have time to knit right now. Just handling this speckled beauty (botanically dyed speckles, no less!) from Wing and a Prayer Farm lifted my spirits.
Elastic yarns, such as this wonderfully crimpy yarn spun from Cormo fleeces, can get a bit stretched as they are wound into balls (sometimes called cakes) using a swift and ballwinder. When using a ballwinder with a yarn like this, I often wind once from skein to ball, and then I rewind the ball again to relax the yarn. When handwinding, I can wind more loosely the first time.
Think hand-winding is slow? From start to finish, I wound this 250-yard skein in just about 10 minutes. And what a quiet, relaxing 10 minutes it was as I admired the sweet speckles and mused about how they would look knitted.
To start, open the skein, give it a good snap to help loosen tangles.
Step By Step
The first step is to open the skein into a loop, give it a couple of snaps to loosen any tangles, and lay the skein across your knees or hang it over the back of a chair. Untie or cut the ties to find one end. Note: I am right-handed, so left-handed knitters might reverse these instructions.
Lay the end of the yarn in the palm of your passive (nondominant) hand.
[PAYWALL]
Begin winding the yarn very loosly onto your thumb, wrapping from the bottom right to top left. Wind until you have a little pile of wraps like this.
Now, rotate the wraps clockwise on your thumb so they are leaning the other direction, and then resume winding as before (from bottom right to upper left). Remember to wind loosely as this little X forms the core of your ball.
Keep going! Just keep winding from bottom right to upper left and rotating the ball as it grows, yard after yard.
Those loosely wound wraps at the beginning make the ball easy to pull off your thumb, where you’ll see the center-pull end.
I find that this winding method becomes a very satisfying challenge to see just how perfectly formed each ball can be. By the time you know it, you’ll be at the end of the skein and looking for more yarn to wind!
If you would like to see this in action, I filmed a video version, which is available on YouTube below.
Best wishes for tangle-free skeins!
—Kate
Kate Larson (she/her) is Editor of Spin Off and Senior Editor of Farm & Fiber Knits. She teaches handspinning and knitting around the country, has published articles and patterns in books and magazines, and spends as many hours as life allows in the barn with her beloved flock of Border Leicester sheep.
To start, open the skein, give it a good snap to help loosen tangles.
