Tools of the Trade

I love knowing the mundane details of how things come together. With that in mind, here are the steps I take and the tools I use to get started knitting on projects.

Here is what I use to wind yarn from a skein into a ball (some people call the tidy balls made with this style of ball winder a cake). The lavender on the left is my ball winder, and the orange clothes hangers with various abandoned kitchen gadgets make up my swift. 

The skein of yarn is unwound and laid on the swift to be held in place (look closely and you will see a binder clip on each clothes hanger, this keeps the yarn in place). 

The skeins are tied together to keep things in order. Now that the swift is in place to hold the yarn in order, you just cut these (this skein had only two, but sometimes there are more). 

Here is the ball winder up close. Once the yarn is in place, you need one of these (or you can wind by hand, but I prefer this little guy's quick neat cakes). 

Pick one end of the yarn (does not matter at all which one you choose) and string it through the metal arm and through the notches on the top of the cylinder. Most of the time this is enough to hold it in place, but with slippery yarns sometimes more care is needed to get things started. 

Now you can see my real secret, I hold the ball winder with my feet. I do this because I like to have both my hands free. If I held it in my left hand, cranked the handle with my right hand, then I would have to put things down if the yarn needs any help. Many ball winders can be attached to a table, but that also has never really worked with any of my tables. 

Here is what the cake will look like with all the yarn wound onto the ball winder. I love seeing the color variations in this way. 

The side view really shows you how nicely shaped the cakes that this machine produce. This cake is much less likely to roll away from you while you are working. All that is left to do is just lift the cake off of the cylinder, grab some needles, and begin your next project.