I am going to say something that may be considered heresy. I hate center pulled yarn balls. I do. Hate them. Hate. Them. Bad. Hate using them. Hate winding yarn into them. Hate them so bad that projects will often be delayed over the fact that I don’t want to wind the yarn so that I can get started.
I thought I was just bad at making yarn cakes. Mine always have a knot in the middle, always seem to have some sort of yarn barf incident at some phase of the project. Always. Go. Bad.
I thought I was doomed to a life of hating yarn balls and hiding my ineptitude in making yarn balls. (Wind them slower…nope…didn’t work. Wind them faster….nope….didn’t work. Slow then fast? Nope. Fast then slow? Nope.)
Then one delightful fall day I read the most wonderful thing. It was liberating, freeing. I read of the Yarn Harlot discussing how one lady was knitting at her group and did so with her skein completely unwound. I thought about this for days, weeks. I thought about whether it would work, would it be folly to try, should a parent of a preschooler have more sense that this?
Then the heavens opened and the telephone rang. The Skype telephone to be exact.
You see, just before we left Washington, Dana and I went to a picnic. A company picnic. Robots-R-Us had a big, ol’ family picnic and I met his coworkers, his boss, and even some people he didn’t know. But I also met a knitter. Turns out that Dana’s fellow Robots-R-Us worker bee is married to a knitter, a very skilled knitter. We talked a bit and life was grand. So…. what does that have to do with the Skype ringing?
Well, the knitter’s husband was on the other end and he said that the knitter had started a blog. And a wonderful blog it is. And while visiting Erica’s blog (you should visit too, I mean it, go visit)…. I saw it. A picture of her attempting the same I-Refuse-To-Wind-This-Yarn-Into-A-Stupid-Yarn-Cake maneuver. And she liked it.
And so I tried it too.
And I liked it too. It is wonderful. And marvelous. And the birds sang, the flowers bloomed…. all because I didn’t have to wind that skein of yarn.
And all was good in the world.
Woo hoo! Another open-skeiner! I do love it, and I can’t wait for my Christmas knitting balled projects to be done so I can get back to it. Just never, ever, decide that it might be ok to work from both ends at once. That, says the voice of experience, spells tangle. But hey, if it’s going to tangle in the ball anyway, might as well avoid the winding. =)
Thanks for the link!
Just looking at that picture makes me jumpy
I use a nostepine and I never have a problem…I guess cause the yarn has to run thru my fingers or something. I have a ball winder, hate it, used it once.
I don’t like the centre pulls either. I wind them skeins to normal balls, and am just happy!
I see that picture of AG up there with the skein around her neck. You are a brave woman!
I had never even thought of that…. I hate the yarn you buy at the store, mine always have knots….. Thanks for the great idea!!!
I love open skein too or as someone else says, I rewind center ball into regular ball !
I hate center pull balls too. I hate pulling from the center so I work from the outside in. I would be afraid of tangling all my yarn that way. But good luck to you if you can do it.
OK, now that I seen photos of 2 people trying this unwound skein thing I am keeping an open mind. Please let us know how it goes as the skein gets towards the end. Is there enough weight to keep the unworking yarn on your leg, or does it all want to come up at once?
I myself am very happy with center pull balls for the most part, but I am perfectly okay with anyone else doing whatever works for her or him. Usually, I think the yarn tells us what kind of arrangement it needs, if we’d only listen carefully.
Kris, that shade of yarn on your knee is a heavenly blue!
Well, have to say that I love center pull skeins.
I had two lace weight hanks, before I got my swift and winder, and laid them across the backs of two chairs so I could wind them by hand. Well, they got so tangled. Never again!
My center pull balls work fine, no tangles, etc. To each his own I suppose.
Hey, I’ve done this for years. Rampant lazy gene, I guess. A long time ago I saw a photo of a woman in Shetland doing lace knitting with the hank around her neck, and figured if it was good for her, its good for me! I very seldom do cakes anymore. Except the chocolate ones, of course.
Oh My.. I would be all tangles !!!!
Ooo! I may have to try that soon. I have *skeins* of yarn that I “need” wound before I can start a project, and I don’t think I can get to a LYS for a while. This may be just the ticket…
Of course, I don’t dislike CPBs. I find them kind of fun to wind (okay, I just like watching the swift spin), and I pull from the outside instead of the inside, which avoids the problem of yarn barf entirely. 😀
I hate winding too… and the yarn barf is a pain. I’m going to have to give this non-wound thing a try. I’m concerned of how well it will work combined with the train and the big winter coat though. I don’t know if I have the courage to do it with cobweb though, but it would save oodles of winding time there!
I usually start out with the center pull balls, then at some point have a spectacular yarn barf accident, and end up pulling it all apart and winding it by hand into a regular round ball. I do not have any clue why I keep doing this, and why I don’t just wind it into round balls to start with. The open hank thing makes me nervous. How the heck do you transport your project around with it like that?