Wind a Center-Pull Ball By Hand

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.