All wound up
I have to admit it - I get a real charge out of winding a ball of yarn. There's something about it - the excitement of starting a new project, the thrill of watching the yarn transform from the beautiful but non-workable skein to the homely but utilitarian center-pull ball - that just gets me going.
I have been a knitter since I was about five or six years old. (I know that I started knitting well before we moved when I was little, and I was seven when we moved). Since then I have always had a knitting project on the needles. Some projects took longer than others, but I have never gone through any long "dry spells" where I didn't knit at all for years.
My mother taught me to knit and I am eternally grateful to her for doing so. She helped me develop the basic skills and love for the craft that kept me going with it even when I got frustrated.
My mother is a very frugal person (her mother was a minister's daughter during the Great Depression, and she knew how to squeeze a penny out of anything). When I was a kid my mother would never spend money on a tool if she could make do with what she already had. Consequently, we wound yarn into balls by hand: why buy a swift and ball winder when you've got hands and the back of a chair? I have wound balls of yarn off every family members' outstretched hands, off my knees, my feet, off chairs, even off a stranger's hands who was sitting next to me on an airplane. I didn't mind too much - it could be fun and usually it was just one ball at a time. I occasionally ogled the ball winder and swift at the yarn store, but they were expensive and it seemed extravagant.
Until my senior year of high school, when I made a sweater for my boyfriend. It was a large cardigan, mostly in blue but with colored bands in black, beige and I think a little bit of orange. It was at least four, if not five colors. And did I mention that I was using the yarn doubled?
So there I was, all geared up to start knitting, and I had to spend an entire evening winding balls of yarn. Ten balls of yarn. Winding, and winding, when all I really wanted to do was start knitting. It was such a drag, that I went to the yarn store shortly after and bought the ball winder and swift, expense be damned.
And I have never regretted it.
I think about that experience almost every time I wind a ball of yarn, and I realize that was the first time that I consciously spent a lot of money on a tool, knowing that it would last me a long time and I would have a more pleasant experience with the craft overall because of investing in the proper tools. It certainly wasn't the last time, but almost every time that I buy a major tool for a craft project I think about how glad I am to have the ball winder and swift. (This from the woman who now has three sets of interchangeable needles!)
So this was the scene the other day as I wound yarn for multiple projects:
This gigantic hank of lace weight
became this medium sized ball (deceptive, isn't it? Just one ball of yarn for a shawl - I hope!)
And I wound these at the same time (I know, I'm out of order since I already posted pics of the socks in progress - what can I say!)
And one random photo for you
I had several large pieces of fabric to launder and decided to take them to the laundromat instead of washing them at home. Punkin got a little bored so I let her play with my little digital camera. She took some fun shots, and I really liked this one of my disembodied hands in front of the bank of washers and dryers.
And the boyfriend sweater - it was beautiful, I loved making it, and he loved wearing it. That boy wore that sweater just about every day, and I had so beaten into him the message about not putting it in the washing machine that he was afraid to wash it. So, many months later I took it back from him so I could wash it, and then broke up with him before I got it washed. He waited until I went away one weekend and then called my mother to ask if he could come by and get his sweater back, which he did and I'm glad. I hope he got a lot of good use out of it. More than ten years later I got word that he had died unexpectedly and I thought about tracking down his mother to offer my condolences, but I was more than a little worried that I wouldn't be able to stop myself from asking about the sweater, and I decided that would be fairly crass! Hopefully someone, somewhere is wearing and enjoying that sweater.
I have been a knitter since I was about five or six years old. (I know that I started knitting well before we moved when I was little, and I was seven when we moved). Since then I have always had a knitting project on the needles. Some projects took longer than others, but I have never gone through any long "dry spells" where I didn't knit at all for years.
My mother taught me to knit and I am eternally grateful to her for doing so. She helped me develop the basic skills and love for the craft that kept me going with it even when I got frustrated.
My mother is a very frugal person (her mother was a minister's daughter during the Great Depression, and she knew how to squeeze a penny out of anything). When I was a kid my mother would never spend money on a tool if she could make do with what she already had. Consequently, we wound yarn into balls by hand: why buy a swift and ball winder when you've got hands and the back of a chair? I have wound balls of yarn off every family members' outstretched hands, off my knees, my feet, off chairs, even off a stranger's hands who was sitting next to me on an airplane. I didn't mind too much - it could be fun and usually it was just one ball at a time. I occasionally ogled the ball winder and swift at the yarn store, but they were expensive and it seemed extravagant.
Until my senior year of high school, when I made a sweater for my boyfriend. It was a large cardigan, mostly in blue but with colored bands in black, beige and I think a little bit of orange. It was at least four, if not five colors. And did I mention that I was using the yarn doubled?
So there I was, all geared up to start knitting, and I had to spend an entire evening winding balls of yarn. Ten balls of yarn. Winding, and winding, when all I really wanted to do was start knitting. It was such a drag, that I went to the yarn store shortly after and bought the ball winder and swift, expense be damned.
And I have never regretted it.
I think about that experience almost every time I wind a ball of yarn, and I realize that was the first time that I consciously spent a lot of money on a tool, knowing that it would last me a long time and I would have a more pleasant experience with the craft overall because of investing in the proper tools. It certainly wasn't the last time, but almost every time that I buy a major tool for a craft project I think about how glad I am to have the ball winder and swift. (This from the woman who now has three sets of interchangeable needles!)
So this was the scene the other day as I wound yarn for multiple projects:
This gigantic hank of lace weight
became this medium sized ball (deceptive, isn't it? Just one ball of yarn for a shawl - I hope!)
And I wound these at the same time (I know, I'm out of order since I already posted pics of the socks in progress - what can I say!)
And one random photo for you
I had several large pieces of fabric to launder and decided to take them to the laundromat instead of washing them at home. Punkin got a little bored so I let her play with my little digital camera. She took some fun shots, and I really liked this one of my disembodied hands in front of the bank of washers and dryers.
And the boyfriend sweater - it was beautiful, I loved making it, and he loved wearing it. That boy wore that sweater just about every day, and I had so beaten into him the message about not putting it in the washing machine that he was afraid to wash it. So, many months later I took it back from him so I could wash it, and then broke up with him before I got it washed. He waited until I went away one weekend and then called my mother to ask if he could come by and get his sweater back, which he did and I'm glad. I hope he got a lot of good use out of it. More than ten years later I got word that he had died unexpectedly and I thought about tracking down his mother to offer my condolences, but I was more than a little worried that I wouldn't be able to stop myself from asking about the sweater, and I decided that would be fairly crass! Hopefully someone, somewhere is wearing and enjoying that sweater.
2 Comments:
I love using the ball winder, too.
The most recent balls of yarn I have been using have been a little recalcitrant in giving up their innermost ends, so I have taken to re-winding them rather than turing them into a squiggly mess of knots trying to find the inside end.
I must be an idiot because whenever I have knitted (which I'm not too good at) or crocheted I just pull the yarn right off the skein! So there is a better way??? I learned to knit from my grandma, too but I never could get my hands to assume the correct positioning. I taught myself to crochet from a book. But neither of those sources ever mentioned doing something with the skein. Boy am I in the dark.
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