Epic Ball Winding

I just wound a 300g skein of Wollmeise lace...

(that I picked up at Knit Nation - the colorway is Dora, a lovely deep true blue)

...into a ball. By hand.

I put the massive hank on my swift, but this incredible chunk of yarn, 3 or 6 times the size of the average ball of yarn, simply wouldn't fit on my ball winder in one piece. I didn't want to break the yarn if I didn't have to, and I quite like winding balls by hand, so that's what I did.

Wollmeise Lacegarn is much thicker than your standard lace yarn, really more of a light fingering. Still, a 1740-yard ball is nothing to sneeze at. I was very careful in my winding, focusing on the geometry of the ball, making sure the center was clear, to avoid any yarn-barf situation.

Some people watch me winding my balls like it's witchcraft, but I really find ballwinding soothing and enjoyable. The feeling of the yarn running through my hands, the opportunity to catch any knots in the skein - I like it much better than the sometimes floppy, half-hearted cakes that come off of my clunky 20-year-old ball winder.


At the start of the winding, I keep my fingers in the center of the ball to function like a nostepinne or a ball-winder core, giving space for the yarn to relax in the middle of the ball. After I take my fingers out there's no need to wind loosely after that - because once I've knit past the point I wound with my fingers as a core, all that middle yarn is gone, giving space for the tighter outer yarn to relax. If you wind everything too loosely, the whole thing would collapse either from the inside or the outside.

I wound in layers evenly around the ball. I don't generally have much trouble with yarn barf, or with collapsing balls until near the end, so I think my ball-winding method is solid - but I've never wound a ball this big before, so I guess we'll see!

~Joyuna