@kelbournewoolens It’s time for another yarn lesson with Courtney! Today she’s sharing how to hand wind a twisted hank into a ball. You can also do this with a swift and ball winder, which we will show soon! Any questions? Let us know! 👇 #kelbournewoolens #knittingtutorial #yarnwinding #crochet #knitting ♬ original sound - Kelbourne Woolens
Transcript:
Hi everyone, welcome back!
Today I'm going to talk to you about winding yarn into a ball. The last time the last time we were all together I talked about what the different put-ups are called. So you may recall that this is a hank. This is a twisted hank. It usually looks like this, and I'm going to hand wind this into a ball!
You may think: I know how to wind yarn into a ball. It's not that hard. But I'm going to show you a great technique!
I learned this at some point from somebody else. I was–I don't know–I was probably like 22 or something like that at a knitting convention. I'm sitting on the floor with somebody and I was winding yarn into a ball and she was like, “whoa whoa whoa whoa hold on I want to show you something”. And that day I learned something!
If you have a hank of yarn, you cannot knit from it like this. It's tied together in a few spots. You cut those out. One of those spots will have the beginning and the end tied together. I just cut that knot out, so now I have a beginning and I have an end.
If you have somebody nearby, you can have them hold it like this, while you wind the beginning and the end. One of the ends will be on the inside, and one of them will come from the outside.
You want to pull from the one that's coming from the outside, that way it won't get super tangled.
So you can either have someone hold it like this, or you can put it over a chair. I beg of you to not try to wind it into a ball like this. You have to keep it organized. Something could go wrong, and you will be annoyed and you will be upset. Just save yourself the bother.
I'm going to throw it over a chair. When you start, give yourself a little bit to work with.
This is how I begin: I've got my end here and I'm going to just wrap it around my fingers so that it's nice and loose. When I have a little bit I'm going to take it off of my fingers and I'm going to pinch it in the middle so it's like a little bow.
And then I'm going to wrap around it that way now. See how I have my thumb in there?
This is crucial! You want to wrap around your finger because when you have a little bit left and take it out, it's still nice and squishy.
I'm going to give myself some more yarn. This is a really good mindfulness project. When you just want to do something really repetitive and calming, this is a great thing to do.
Okay so now it looks like this. I'm going to do it again and again. I'm going to wrap it around either my thumb or maybe you want to wrap it around your fingers. Turn it, wrap, turn, wrap, and you just keep doing that.
The reason you don't want to wrap it against itself is you're going to wrap it too tight. It has to have some give. You should be able to smoosh it if you wrap it just around the ball, by the time you get to the outside of the ball, it's going to be really really dense.
The yarn on the inside is going to be under so much pressure, it's going to stretch out your fibers, it's going to affect your gauge. You're going to have a hard ball of yarn. It's not going to knit the way you want, especially if it's going to sit in your stash (which we know it never would). If it's going to sit in your stash like that for years, let's be real, it's just not good for the yarn. Eventually you're just going to have to throw it away. That would be sad.
So just wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap, wrap. There is a way (if you are very careful when you're beginning this) if you keep track of the end that you begin with and always keep it visible and a wrap around it, you can hand wind a center pull ball, which is amazing.
But anyways, always wrap around your fingers or your thumb like that and that's all. Enjoy.
