Winding a Small Ball of Yarn
Jen LucasDescription
Sometimes you need just a small amount of yarn for your project; you might be making a toy and you need a little accent color for a small detail, or maybe you need just enough yarn for one stripe, or a few small balls for colorwork. In this video, Jen Lucas demonstrates how to wind a small center-pull ball of yarn by hand in two different sizes.
First, Jen extends two fingers on her non-dominant hand. Next, she shows how to begin by placing the yarn between her two fingers. She wraps the yarn around one finger, back between fingers, then around the other finger in a figure-eight pattern.
Jen continues wrapping the yarn around her fingers in this figure-eight pattern until she has the amount she needs. Pinching the loops at the center so that it does not come apart, Jen carefully removes the yarn loops from her fingers. Next, Jen shows how to wrap the yarn vertically around the center of the loops a few times to secure the finger loops. She cuts the yarn and tucks the end of the yarn into the center loops to keep everything in place.
Jen talks about how you might want a slightly larger ball of yarn to make a swatch or for another slightly larger project. She explains that although the process is still the same, you can use four fingers instead of two to create a larger center-pull ball. To begin, place the yarn in the center of two fingers, then wrap around two fingers at a time (in the same figure-eight pattern) to make longer loops.
Winding your own small balls of yarn is fun and easy to do—try this method on your next project!
Hi, I'm Jen Lucas, and I want to talk to you about winding a small ball of yarn by hand. Sometimes when you're working on a crochet project, you might just need a small amount of yarn and you don't want to pull out your big skein and drag it over to your project. You just want a tiny little ball to do that little detail. So I'm going to show you a very easy way to wind a small ball of yarn by hand. So I already have one made right here, and you can see it just, it almost looks like a little bowtie or something, but it's really nice because it actually makes a center pole ball. And so it's perfect when you just need to add one quick little stripe to your project, and so you don't have a bunch of huge balls of yarn that you're trying to manage while you're working on your projects. So I'd love to show you how to make one. Here I just have a ball of yarn, and if I wanted to wind a little bit off by hand, this is what I would do. If you want a really small ball of yarn, you're just going to take your two fingers and you're going to put the tail right in between them like this, and then you're just going to hold it and make a figure eight. And so you can just wind off as much as you want. I'll just do a little bit here. And so once I have the amount I want, I just pinch it at the center, pull it off my fingers, and then I'm going to take a little bit more yarn and just wrap it around the center. Then we can take our scissors and just give it a little cut here. And now we have this tiny little ball. I just take this little tail and tuck it in to the center there. And we just have this tiny little center pole ball of yarn. It's perfect. So if you want to make a larger one, and sometimes I do make larger balls of yarn like this if I do have a larger project, or I'm making a swatch, or something, you basically do the same thing. I just do it over four fingers. So I'll put the yarn right in between, in the center, and again, hold it and just do the figure eight. And you can actually make a very large ball of yarn this way. And so you would just keep winding, and winding, and winding, and winding until you were happy with the size. And same thing, you can just pull it out, wrap it around, give it a trim, and there you go. So you can make these in all different sizes. And again, it's perfect, especially for small toys or little decor items where you don't need a lot of yarn. Try making your own little hand wound ball. I think you'll really enjoy it.
A terrific idea! Thanks for sharing it. It will make it easier to store those small amounts of yarn you would like to keep instead of discarding them.