Elka Knits

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April 15, 2005

whoops

Oh in regards to todays earlier post:

The really scuzzy chair is the oldest kid enhanced computer chair~ my butt is not parking in that ewwwwwww and I do use my noste and wind old fashioned balls with the partials left over after I knit my project. Although I do keep some cacoons in a drawer with other yarns little odds and ends to be riffled through pushes the neatness factor. The twice or more * bit from earlier was just that~ wind into cacoon, knit with, wind into cpb using noste. 3 times the pleasure from one hank of yarn. I assume you like the feel of fiber flowing through your fingers. If you do not enjoy the feel of fiber WTF are you doing here? Ummmm that is to say go ahead and use your swift and ball winder. Also I can afford a swift and ball winder thank you very much and have even owned them in the past. This is not an I am so poor will you please send me a swift and ball winder post. I prefer to wind my yarn this way and when I owned a swift and ball winder I wound my cacoons and then wound into cpballs for storage. Gotta get the fiber thrills where we can girlies.

Posted by Elka at 11:57 AM

Yarn WARNING LOADS OF PICTURES

Approximately twice a year I type out instructions on how I wind yarn. No I don't make the old fashioned ball that rolls around and has the tendancy to be tight and mean. Nor do I own a swift and ball winder. I do have several nostepinnes but thats not how either. When I started knitting seriously, as an adult, back in the 80's I picked up Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop. Obviously the first edition and I don't know if the second has these instructions. In this book she describes how to make a "Yarn Cacoon" which she had picked up from a Japanese student[fuzzy memory here I passed the book on to somebody years ago] when she noticed that this particular student had a mini hank of yarn on her desk from which she was knitting. My instructions begin incorrectly. I do remember I typed out the instructions and then checked the book for something and her first few steps were different from mine. So here is a photo essay~ bad photos cause its hard to do a two handed task and take pictures with the nonexistant third hand.

Oh wait first why you should bother learning to do this; your at a wool festival or vacation and picked up a hank of yarn which you must cast on now and don't have a swift and ball winder, your working with a particularly slippy yarn such as silk or nylon and don't want your center pull ball to colapse upon itself causing a big ol garf blob, its reasonably fast[3 mins for 200yd hank of WW/aran yarn just finished for photo essay barf glob dealt with and pictures taken during this time frame], there is no risk whatsover of having a tight ball which causes some to wind center pull balls twice, you are capable of winding big ol hanks of yarn 2000 yds of sport weight have been wound by me and my hands are a woman's size small, the resulting cacoon is reasonably portable~in fact I tossed the just finished cacoon into the air twice and dropped it twice and my yarn didn't tangle etc however I wouldn't personally plan on carting it around in a bag that will be ruffled through too often, and lastly you get to enjoy the fiber flowing through your fingers an extra time or two* Ready?

Step One: untwist your yarn hank and drape it over a chair with arms. The arms are to keep the hank from flooping all the way to floor. Take a minute to snap your yarn first. You know put your hands in center and snap them apart. If you don't do this you may have a tangly hank to begin with which will cause you to start all over again [no bother its fun] and would cause you problems if you were dealing with a swift and cpbw anyways. Two pictures to show my yarn over chair~ note that the yarn is not pulled taunt so that is unimportant. No fiddling with a swift to make sure the hank is just so :^> :

&

Find your knot and undo it. Unwind a bit to see which is the from center stand vs outer strand only cause I was taught to always wind off a hank from the center. No clue why I was taught this but I was so go ahead... what can it hurt. This is also a moment to snap your yarn again and see potential tangly pitfalls. Take the center end and wind it several times around the middle finger of your left hand {apologies to lefties I never thought of how to wind onto right hand}

Now here is where the I only have 2 hands part gets bothersome. I don't let go of the yarn while I am winding duh. Oh the yarn is wound around middle fingertip several times and you carry it accross back of hand diagonally from middle finger to wrist at pinkie edge

Accross wrist at base of hand

Up behind fleshy thumb part to hook around and come down between thumb and pointer finger juncture

Hmmm ok diagonally accross palm from thumb/pointer juncture to wrist at pinkie edge then diagonally behind hand to thumb/pointer juncture *sigh* accross base of pointer finger to slip between pointer and middle finger juncture {I already said sorry for being two handed give me a break on this its a quick loopie thing}

I paused here to show you the back of my hand so you could see the original yarn wrapping and one complete pass~ normally you don't look at the back of your hand while winding but it might clarify a bit:

You will be repeating from the first accross base of hand picture.

Here are two pictures the first of just two passes and the second of several passes. You will note that in the second my hand is no longer in the I am gonna be taking pictures position.

&

I call this my yarn winding dance. I stand over my chair and tend to sway from side to side as I wind the yarn from part of hank on left vs right. I tend to be over the area from which the yarn is feeding. I also flick my wrists to ease in winding. Here we have the photo essay sans words showing the wrist flickery~ness and the thread is not normally this long but I held camara in right hand and snapped as I wound:

Problems you might encounter are garfblobs which can be loosened and worked using thumb and pointer of left hand and right hand, the outer strand catching on working yarn and causing a teeny tangle[dig it out and set it out of yarn traveling path] multiple strands/loops feeding off chair causing a garf blob looking area over chair. This happens when your yarn catches and pulls extra loops or if hank was tangly to begin with. You can keep winding when this happens just slow down a bit and be right on top of where yarn is feeding from to not pull more hank loops out of order. Eventually your yarn will be feeding from these extra garf blobby looking loops and you will find they are not tangled themselves they just tried to jump ahead of themselves ;^> If you come to a real tangle then you can slip the cacoon off your wrist and untangle by drawing through whatever or,if near end, make a ball from other end and untangle to where you are at then wind from ball into cacoon. Here is a picture of a teeny garfblob I came to and you can clearly see that I had use of my thumb and pointer fingers to aid in opening up loops and fixing the problem:

I don't understand why it is called a cacoon. Looks like a little turban to me. OK digression aside. Tuck your yarn end into some outer strands. This is what your hand will look like. CAUTION when working with really large hanks there is a tendency to wind tightly and your fingers will be strangled and turn purple. Trust Elka on this one. I have wound a hank of LL Heaven or Helen's Lace as well as oversized WW hanks from Henry's Attic on my hand. There is absolutely no need to strangle your poor fingers. Ok back to turban:

In this next picture that the yarn never crosses from bump around pointer to bump around thumb. If it does no real problem tho there will be a little tangle when you get to that part while knitting. Try not to do a crossover ;^>

You should easily slide the hank off thumb. In fact, with really super large hanks, you may have pushed the yarn further down thumb to avoid it slipping off

Slip yarn off of pointer finger:

The yarn wrapped around middle finger is your working end. Here is a picture of the dropped and tossed cacoon to show its a bit more open but didn't collapse into a huge tangle:

Do you see why I said there was no chance in hell of creating a tight little ball? Its a nice organized pile of yarn like an accordian I guess only a fig 8. Here is a picture of my much moved cacoon being knit from along side the tossed cacoon:

WHEWeeeee did you make it this far? Have a great yarny day and knitterly evening.

Posted by Elka at 10:26 AM | Comments (4)