Tag: yarn

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.