What do you do with your leftover scraps of yarn? Do you wind them into little round balls? This method has some serious drawbacks…
If you are tired of your balls of yarn rolling all over the floor, attracting unwanted “help” from your cats, picking up fuzz, and tangling in your yarn basket, all you have to do is learn how to create a center-pull ball, or bobbin.
These little figure-eight bundles are really fast to wind.
You can also pull your working yarn straight from the center – keeping your yarn neatly tucked in your purse and not adventuring all over the house.
Bobbins are also used in Intarsia knitting to keep small amounts of different-colored yarn tidy and separate while you knit your color chart.
Another time you will likely use this technique is when you’ve unraveled part of your project and find yourself with 20 yards of unraveled yarn. Now you’ll know how to keep it safe!
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How To Hand-Wind A Center-Pull Ball or Bobbin
If you liked this tutorial on how to hand-wind a center-pull ball, post in the comments!
Great skill to have, and an excellent video!
That’s the best tip I have ever heard! Thank you so much.
Wow! Glad to learn this. No more small balls of yarn rolling around all over the place. Thanks for posting this.
I really like that idea and the video. Thank you.
Love the video! The Spock reference will serve as a mnemonic of sorts for future bobbins. Thank you!
You’re so welcome! Thanks for the comment.
Grand tip! I’ve been taught other ways to do this and none of them worked…did this and my yarn stash looks so much better.. I love how you mentioned “Now were going to look like Spock for a bit.” I’m a huge Trekkie so it’s great when my nerd side combines with knitting! Now when I think of Spock I’m going to see a picture in my mind of him winding yarn around his fingers making a bobbin…How cute!
Hi Liat Gat,
That was very nice. I’ve seen others do this where they seem to keep the yarn very neat, keeping the rounds lying side by side. You showed that that wasn’t necessary–you could overlap, which may be necessary depending on how much yarn you plan to wind into a bobbin or ball. I also liked that you pulled out the bobbin of yarn, from beginning to end with no snags or knots. Thank you very much.
Thanks for reposting this through email, just in time for my first bobbin project. And the photo is too cute!
Have you ever used this for winding an entire ball of yarn?
Yep, that’s what I had to do for all the yarn I bought in Argentina, where I had no ball-winder. Sometimes if the ball is big I just wind it into a regular ball that pulls from the outside.
so simple, but so great…I love it!!
thanks again :)
It’s SO much easier to deal with your scrap yarn when you know how to do this. Helps you make friends at knit night, too! :)
Thanks for commenting!
wow, Liat what a great tip.
Thanks for posting this, will be using this for sure.