The other day in work, I found myself in a dilemma. I'd finished my knitting project that morning on the bus, and now lunchtime had rolled around and I had a pattern and an unwound skein. What on earth was a crafting obsessed girl to do? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

How to Wind a Centre Pull Ball of Yarn using Office Supplies {1}

The yarn I'm winding is these pics is Jitterbug "Raspberry". To be honest, this is the second ball of yarn I've wound this way as, typically enough, the first time round I didn't have the camera with me. Lesson learnt, I hope.

So, to start with, I snipped the threads holding the skein in place, and after separating the start of the skein, I wrapped it around both knees. It's important to maintain tension on the skein while you're winding it, so you'll need to spread your knees enough to maintain that tension.
Note: The skein in going just around my bent knees, it is not going under my legs.



And this is where the office supplies come in. Using a couple of plastic cups, trap the start of the yarn between two cups.








With the yarn trapped, start winding! I starting straight on to build up a little grip, that started winding the yarn at an angle so it would stay tidy. The important thing here is to make sure you wind the ball good and firm, so as long as you're doing that, how you're winding shouldn't matter too much.






And voila, one wound ball. I tried to get a pic of the inside of the cups, which have compressed slightly with the pressure of the wound yarn, but it's not come out very well, so I'll spare you the eye strain. The tail lying to the front on the ball in this pic is from the end of the skein, not the promised centre pull end.




But remember that trapped yarn from the set up? Just gently pop the cups up from the centre of the ball, and there it is!

And this is my finished centre pull ball of yarn. For the last ball I wound, I had wanted to start a pair of socks, and given that I like knitting two socks at the same time, I was also stuck for a weighing scales to seperate the ball into two equal parts. Winding the skein like this meant I could use one centre pull and one outer pull to knit each sock, which, inceidently, were the Kiertoradalla from my previous post.

Happy Knitting!


{1} Yes, I was on break when I was doing this.