Why roll yarn into a ball

See picture 2. Drape the loop of yarn over two chairs or the edge of a desk, or between the hands of a helpful friend. This keeps the yarn from getting all tangled up while you're winding it.

You start winding from the center of the ball obviously. Hold one free end in your hand and drape the long end around your thumb as shown in picture 1. Make your hand into a gun, and wrap the yarn in a figure 8 around thumb and finger. Continue in this method until you run out of room on your fingers! Slide the stack of figure 8s off your finger and thumb and pinch together in the middle.

Pinch the yarn stack between finger and thumb, keeping the starting end draped over your thumb. You want to make sure as you wind the ball that this end remains free and accessible!

Start to wrap the yarn around this bunch in a circular motion to form a ball. Keep your thumb pinched into the middle as you wrap.

Continue wrapping the ball of yarn. You will quickly see it begin to resemble a proper ball and it will be easier to understand what you're doing. I like to keep my thumb stuck into the center of the yarn where I started wrapping so I don't lose the free end. Then I just wrap and turn, wrap and turn all around the ball until I'm out of yarn. Finally, tuck in the end of the yarn you've been wrapping so it doesn't unravel. Now you have a center-pull yarn ball.

Take the center end that you kept free, and start your knitting from there! Sorry, that tip should have attached to the end, not the introduction, but I can't fix it myself.

Also, I forgot to add the paper-towel trick: wrap the tricky, slippery yarn around an empty paper-towel core. You can then knit from a stand-alone paper-towel holder. Tip 3 years ago on Introduction. A couple of points to emphasize:. This is especially important if you're not going to use the yarn immediately.

I've had fussy, slick, or glitzy yarn, usually ribbons, that just won't stay in a ball. Immediately after winding, I keep it in a separate baggie I use larger baggies for projects so it can be contained with just the one working strand allowed out through a hole. How cool, I've seen and used the figure 8 with a little wrap to keep it together; and the second part on its own, which is time consuming in the beginning.

These 2 combined is just genius!!! Boy, I wish I had read your instructions yesterday! Had I done so, I would not have the mess I have to untangle now.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your How-To! Definitely working great! This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. In long er , I work with you to bring your clothing into alignment with who you are, and who you feel you are meant to be. But it does mean that if I want to start anything new like swatching of the upcoming Shawl Geometry Books update and that yarn comes in hanks or skeins, I have three options: 1. I ended up choosing door number 3.

The PROS of knitting directly from a skein of yarn: : The biggest upside is, you can start knitting immediately. Just like with anything in knitting, it gets easier with practice.

If you want to try knitting directly from a skein of yarn, here are a couple tips to get you started… : start with a smoother, heavier yarn. Fingers crossed, that this continues. No related posts. What is the very next step? You may also like. Halloween costume, book edits, and a new sweater. Shawl Geometry Book 3 is briefly off my desk! August 15, at am. So glad this helped! Happy knitting! August 20, at am. Leave a Reply Cancel Reply. About — Holly Chayes.

In short, I fix broken wardrobes. Why is this done? Depends on how the yarn is wound when you buy it. If it is a hank of yarn, then yes, you have to wind your yarn into more manageable balls. A hank is just yarn wound into a loop and if you tried to knit with it the way it comes from the store, it would turn into a mess of tangles.

They are set up so that you can just find the end of the yarn and start knitting with it straight from the yarn as it comes from the store. I wind all my yarn becasue I have had several times I have been in the middle of a row and have then seen that the yarn is tied together. So I always ball mine now.