Carter and I exchanged most of our gifts early, before we left for Indiana. I got him a bunch of tools he wanted, and he got me 3 fiestaware baking dishes (not pictured) and a yarn swift and ball winder! For those of you who don't know what that means, I'll illustrate below in pictures:
This is how most nice yarn comes when you buy it in a nice yarn shop. It's called a hank or a skein, and it's all twisted up. You can't knit from it until you untwist it into a big circular loop, and even then you can't knit DIRECTLY from that big loop, it gets tangled super easily. So that's where the need arises to get the yarn into a center-pull ball.
After I untwisted this yarn (from Jason's alpaca) I loaded it on the yarn swift. This is a big umbrella-type thing that adjusts to different diameters and spins around. (please don't judge me on how I look--it was 1st thing in the morning and I'm still in my jammies and hadn't showered yet!)
Here's the ball winder--the silver arm on the left takes the yarn from the swift, then the yarn goes into the other silver arm, then when you crank the crank the 2nd silver arm rotates around the cream colored cone as the cone ALSO rotates.
final product--a center-pull ball that is easy to knit from!
Here's everything I knitted from that first morning, along with one green hank for comparison. I wound more balls later when I could show Mary, Justin, Mom, and Dad.
Finally, here are some videos of me "winding".
In the beginning I'm thinking Carter is taking a photo! hahaha
5 comments:
Cool!!! You have all the best knitting supplies! Do you and Carter give each other a list or is he just that good at picking out knitting gifts?
We both make lists, but carter is just a good gift-getter and always goes off list and gets me great gifts! I get him stuff mosty on list, he'shard to shop for.
Neat! Though, I have to ask - if youy can't knit directly from a hank/skein, why do they sell them in that form? Unless it's just a lot faster to wind the yarn into a hank/skein than it is to wind it into a center pull ball... why wouldn't they just sell center pull balls? Regardless, cool gifts!
the twisted hank apparently keeps the quality of the yarn better (AND it is indeed easier to get "raw" yarn into a twisted hank than a center-pull ball). I read in a spinning book that when stored for long periods of time you should keep your yarn in twisted hanks, then wind into center pull balls when you need to use them. I don't think it makes a HUGE difference, just a yarn-snob thing. Plus most yarn stores have the same swift-win der thing that I have and usually ask you when you're checking out if you'd like it wound into a center-pull ball, which is nice. but in my case since I'll be creating my own yarn, I will need a way to get it into a ball.
who knew yarn was so complicated!??! :-)
It's also easier to tell what the color/feel of the yarn is when it's in a loose hank than a tightly wound ball so it helps when you're choosing yarn for a project. I didn't think of how you'd need a winder since you're spinning your own yarn!
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