Tag: yarn

All wrapped up

On By CarynIn Craft
Photo description: mesh basket full of hand wound balls of acrylic yarn
Photo description: mesh basket full of wound cakes of acrylic yarn

I finished rewinding all the yarn remnants into cakes. It might not make a long term difference in the neatness of the stash, but it soothes my soul to have them all center-pull. We’re all different.

Ball to cake

On By CarynIn Craft

Every knitter or crocheter has their own preference for the form of their yarn. My friend prefers to wind her yarn into balls before she gets started. With purchased yarn, I dig into the middle and pull the yarn from the inside, then wind the remains as cakes on a winder, or nostepinne style balls. I have a whole bag of remnants that are balled and I am rewinding them as cakes.

Photo description: yarn bowl with hand wrapped ball of yellow yarn going to a Royal ball winder clamped to the counter

I tried using my ceramic yarn bowl, but it isn’t up to the speed produced by the winder, so I dropped the ball into a basket so it didn’t roll around on the floor.

Yarn bowl

On By CarynIn Craft

I have been wanting a yarn bowl, so when we went for another round of ceramic painting and there was an unpainted yarn bowl, I took the leap.

Photo description: green ceramic yarn bowl with holes for yarn or a hook carved in the side for yarn
Photo description: inside of the yarn bowl painted with a spiral of white and black dots

Yarn bowls are a solution to round wrapped balls of yarn. They keep the ball from rolling all over the floor. They work with other yarn preparations too.

It doesn’t need to be fancy

On By CarynIn Craft

If you don’t have a swift or a nostepinne (or don’t want to go upstairs then get them), the back of a chair and a roll of paper work fine to take yarn from skein to ball form.

Photo description: skein of hand spun cotton hung on the back of a wood chair, and center pull ball of yarn started on a roll of card stock, black dog looking on in the background

I rolled up two skeins of hand spun cotton this way. This is the cotton that I spun from raw bolls then three plied two ways: crepe and chain ply.

Photo description: two nostepinne style balls of cotton yarn, chain ply on the left, crepe on the right

I’m most interested in how these two preparations knit up. Yes, I’m looking forward to swatching. I’m weird like that.

Dividing yarn: subtractive method

On By CarynIn Craft

I found painted yarn at my local yarn shop! This yarn is self striping by having a precise color repeat. I don’t need my socks to be identical, but I don’t like knitting two socks from the same ball because of tangle and twist issues, so I divided it in two using a scale and a ball winder.

Photo description: Printed yarn by Cascade with 51g on the scale, and 51g on the winder

I place the full amount of yarn on a scale to get the total weight, then I wind my yarn into a cake using a Royal wool winder until the scale reads half the original. I cut the yarn, and start a new yarn cake.

Photo description: two equal weight yarn cakes with pretty pastel shades of green, purple, blue, pink, white, and yellow.

It is harder to measure going from skein to cake because the skein is on an umbrella swift and the cake on a ball winder, both clamped to the table, but if you go a little past what you think is half, then weigh the cake, it is easy to wind off back onto the swift.