September 11th, 2012

Tuesday’s Knitting & Crochet Tip – How to Wind a Center Pull Ball

You may want to wind your own center pull ball if your yarn cake is starting to collapse on itself during a project, or if you just prefer the stability a center pull ball provides, but don’t have a ball winder handy.

- To wind your own center pull ball, start with the end tucked under your thumb in the palm of your hand.

- Wind the yarn around three fingers a few times, then remove the yarn, and wind in the opposite direction. You want to make sure you’re keeping the tension nice and loose. You don’t want to stretch the yarn at all while you’re doing this.

- Now start winding the yarn around the loops you’ve created. Once you have all the yarn contained, put your thumb into the space where your center strand is coming out and continue winding. It may look a little sloppy at first, but it’ll neaten up as you continue.

- Try to wind a few times in each section and move around the ball to keep in even. When you’re done, just remove your thumb and pull on the center strand. A small bunch of yarn will come out at first, this was the base for our ball. Once that’s out, you have an easy to use center pull ball.

Check out the video below to see this technique in action!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 at 8:56 am and is filed under Tips & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Ardosa Carboni

    i take a pill bottle, pair of chopsticks, or anything else round/oval and just leave a tail and get it started.The yarn is bigger than the pill bottle but it gets it started and stable and if i have to, i can pull off and keep winding.

  • http://www.facebook.com/laura.zinn.338 Laura Zinn

    I continue to wind over my fingers as I use up the rest of the yarn. It makes me feel more confident that I’m not stretching the yarn as I wind (or at least that when I remove my fingers, the yarn can relax).

  • Arachne646

    The pill bottle also can fasten a tail of yarn inside, to make sure a free tail stays available for a centre pull. The longest pill bottle the pharmacy has is best. The bottle also keeps a space in the middle that helps compensate if you wind too tightly. Don’t stretch the yarn! Before I got my ball winder I was winding quite nice yarn cakes on pill bottles.