Renegade Yarn Crisis Averted

A few weeks ago, I got a hank (skein? wound-around pile?) of hand-dyed yarn from a friend, and thought, "Oh, since it's just wrapped in a nice circle here, I'll just lay it gently on the floor, clip those little ties off it, and wind it into a ball!"

SIX HOURS LATER I was done untangling the horrible nasty knotty mess, and swore I would never do that to myself again.

So, last week, I picked up more of those loopy hanks of yarn at a close-out sale, and today I decided it was time to get brave and attempt to tame them into balls. And this time I laid the circle-loop-things around the back of an office chair, and viola! No tangles! No mess! A lovely little pile of center-pull balls! Halleluia!

Four down, four more to wind... someday, I may be grown-up enough for these mysterious swifts and winders that I hear about, but for the moment, this works just fine.

What? How does one make center-pull balls? Well, what do you know, I know the answer to that! It's much easier than it looks in writing...

• First, drape the hank of yarn around the back of a chair or something comparatively sturdy and stable to prevent it from declaring civil war and attacking itself.


• Then, clip off the little ties, and find the ends. It doesn't seem to matter which end you use.


• Open one hand - I use my left, because I'm right-handed, but it would really matter - and place about 6" of one end between two fingers. I put it between my ring and pinky fingers.


• Hold your thumb and index finger vertical, and start to wind the rest of the yarn around them in a figure-8 pattern, clockwise around one and then counterclockwise around the other. Pull the yarn over the top of the chair/yarn-holding-device as needed. Keep doing this until you're up to about the top of your thumb - whenever it feels like you've got a bunch of yarn and your hand is starting to feel weird.


• Carefull slip the yarn off your thumb/index finger and hold it around that center part where the yarn crossed for each figure-8, making sure that the 6" end stays on the side it started and doesn't get caught up with the rest of the yarn as you continue to wrap (one of these times, I left too long of a tail at the beginning-end, and wrapped it around my wrist to keep it from getting wound in)..


• Start wrapping the rest of the yarn perpendicularly around that which is already wrapped, as close as you're comfortable getting to the loops that were around the thumb and pinky, trying to distribute the yarn somewhat evenly. It'll start as a flat/cylindrical shape. Enough wrapping and it'll form a sphere.


• When you get to the other end, the end-end, you can tuck it into the already-wrapped yarn to secure it. I prefer to tie a simple slipknot, through which I tie the yarn's label for future reference..


• Resist the urge to grab that beguilingly loose end and puuuuullllllll - trust yourself that you make a nice center-pull ball and if you unravel it you'll just have to ravel it all back up again..

There are good tutorials of different techniques in various places online, I just don't have my camera here to shoot this one.

Sara, Goddess of Felting...

...totally deserves a shout-out and I totally forgot to do so until now. She suggested, in a comment, that a felted object can be loosened if soaked in white vinegar and then washed out and reblocked. I'm not totally 100% convinced it was the vinegar that did it, only because I haven't tried any other methods yet (like just plain water), but she gets credit for raising the idea that a felted object CAN be loosened in some way... thereby doing very nice things for the final, finished product which is my sister's bag.

Which I don't have pictures of yet, in its fully-finished form. Must remember to take some before I mail it off...

Long-Tail Cast-On Trick

This may seem self-evident, but I didn't figure it out on my own after a few years of a lot of inaccurate casting on...

If you're not great at eying how much yarn you should use for a long-tail cast-on, then, starting an inch or three from the end, wrap the yarn around your needle the requisite number of times. Tie your slip knot after the end of the last wrap, then unwrap it all and cast on. I'm paranoid and give it a few extra inches (because, really, who couldn't use a few extra inches now and then?) but this has been idiot-proof, or at least Kate-proof, since I heard someone else suggest it.