These are crazy times: masks are in. Zoom is in. Staying in is… in. I have only been knitting since December, so I had just found a good local yarn store when it had to close due to coronavirus. I don’t have a swift or a ball winder. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal because I could just have them wind the yarn at the store. But given that it’s not always easy to pop by the local yarn store these days, I thought it would be worth it to wind a couple of balls of yarn by hand. Here’s my handy checklist for old-school winding:
- remove the ball band
- untwist the hank into a loop
- cut off the yarn ties
- find one of the ends
- secure the loop of yarn over the back of a chair, on the arms of a helpful friend, on your knees, however works for you
- hold the end with your fingers and wrap the yarn loosely around your thumb.
- continue for way longer than you think
- admire your beautiful center pull ball of yarn
If you’d prefer to see the steps in action, and get a good look at my pandemic hair in the process, here’s a video of me winding a hank of wicker park worsted in the colorway gold-star blackout, into a neat ball.
Have a great weekend!
A Yarn Tail 
I always manually wind yarn into balls so I can feel any knots or other irregularities in the yarn.
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I have been hand-winding more balls because of coronavirus. It’s not that bad as long as I don’t make a tangle of it.
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