How to Hand Wind Your Yarn
Balling Your Yarn without a Swift
Storing your yarn and keeping everything organized is no small feat. Working with hanks can be tough. And even if you knit with skeins, do you keep the partials as is? My personal preference is to knit with a ball or cake of yarn. It cuts down on some of the work while you knit. But I don’t always love getting out my swift and ball winder. In this quick post, I’ll show you how to hand wind your yarn.
Not too long ago, I didn’t have fancy tools. I would wind my hanks by hand. Last year my dad helped hold a hank for me while I hand wound it. It brought back memories for him. He told me of how he used to sit and hold yarn for my grandmother who hand wound her yarn before working on her crochet projects.
As a kid she tried to teach me, but I didn’t have the patience to sit still long enough to learn how to crochet. Knowing that she hand wound her yarn, makes me feel a bit closer to her when I do the same. We lost her when I was young, so remembering her is becoming harder and harder through the years. I’m so glad to have something like fiber arts to share as a passion and feel a closeness.
To Hand Wind Your Yarn or Buy a Swift and Ball Winder?
Sometimes in the knitting community, you can find a bit of tension. And we’re not talking about your gauge. Some people who are more experienced seem to forget what it’s like starting out. And others who have the means sometimes prefer the more expensive yarns that tend to come in hanks verses the lower cost skeins. Whether to buy the tools you need to wind your yarn into cakes or not comes down to a personal preference. It is totally up to you. Aside from the familial connection, I used to prefer hand winding my yarn because it creates a tighter, more spherical yarn ball verses some of the tools cylindrical “cake” shape. I also have a beautiful hand made yarn bowl to help unravel my yarn as I knit and I like to use it as much as possible. But now I switch between the two.
Now, I can see the benefit of using cakes and sometimes need a swift and winder to put less wear and tear on my hands and arms. So I alternate. But if I have a small bit of yarn that needs wound quickly, this is always my go to method.
How to Wind Your Yarn by Hand:
- Find the end or yarn tail you want to work with.
- Drape the tail over your hand and use your thumb to hold it in place. Then wrap it around your fingers a good number of times.
- Pull the wound yarn off of your fingers and turn it perpendicular. Begin wrapping your yarn again. Continue until you feel it’s time to change direction.
- Just keep turning and wrapping until you have a ball.
