Using yarn from skein

[Christy.lee1989]

Gosh I don't know how to title this topic, but anyways, I use red heart yarn. So it comes in the skein. I always roll it into a ball, but I read that's not good to do cause of the tension and it gets stretched. And for me it does. Didn't rewlise it but it's not the same after I have rolled it into a ball. So I was thinking of just using it from the skein, but when I im rolling it into a ball, I always pull from the middle and it always makes a big knot when I get closer to the end. So if I use from the skein it seems like it would do the same.

 

What I was wanting to do is, I see a lot of ppl saying the get 2 gallon size bags and store their skeins in therre and just open the top slightly when they want to use it and pull the yarn thorough there. I was wanting to do that, but how do I keep it from collapsing onto itself and causing a big knot? I'm not going to use all the yarn at once, like in one day. I'm going to be making a blanket using hexagons and seeing them together, so I will be using one color some. Then another, then back to the first, and I just don't want to mess it up while I'm doing that. What do u guys do?

[Granny Square]

When I first started out, not knowing better I wound my yarn balls so tight you could probably have bounced them.  I learned to wind them very loosely.

 

Smaller balls (example, Wool Ease) I just treat it like an oblong ball and pull from the outside.  You can do this with large skeins like Red Heart Super Saver but they bounce around a bit...if you pull from the center you are going to get 'yarn barf' and collapse whether you put it in a container or not.

 

If you are making motifs, you could pull from the center at first, then since you are cutting the yarn after each motif you could loosely wind the balance of it before it starts to threaten to collapse.

 

You could use a nostepinne (a paper towel roll core would do) to wind a center pull ball (or 'cake'), but you'd still have take care not to wind to tightly.  Here is one demo, there are lots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3XFTyvIiCk

[nancybanta]

I always pull from the center and I've never had a problem.

 

If you want to wind your own balls from the skein and you don't want to make a pull from the center cake as the poster above me has shown you - when you roll your ball, when it's small, put your finger within the ball and wrap the yarn around it as well as the ball of yarn, as it gets bigger, use several fingers.  The space that you'll be making with your fingers will keep you from winding too tight because the yarn will suck itself back into the ball and will relax.

[Becky Morgan]

There used to be "yarn bras" on the market. They were a stretchy netting that squeezed the big skeins of RHSS so they didn't collapse until they were almost all used up. I've found an old tube sock works as well. The last few yards are apt to tangle no matter what, but you can watch for the end of the skein, stop and wind them loosely so they don't.

[Charis]

Oh man! I had no idea about balling the yarm changing how it works into a project. I have never done that but I have a TON of inherited scraps that have been balled for ages and I know they are good and tight...

So follow up question....Is that yarn still going to work ok? And on what sort of project would it not work?

[Christy.lee1989]

Haha. Yarn bra, I have never heard of that before! I think I will give it a try on my project coming up. Right now I'm making a blanket for a 7 year olds birthday, next im going to be making a crochet version of a grandmothers flower garden quilt. Right now the yarn for her blanket is in balls, but next one im going to leave it in the skein and see how that goes. But yeah charis, that's what I read on the Internet that it will stretch it or something, and for me I Find it does change the way it is.mafter it's been in a ball for a while it just doesn't seem like, stretchy I guess, it doesn't seem like it was when I brought it. I don't like it too much that way.

[Granny Square]

I definitely saw a difference in the yarn's stretch behavior in my bad old days when I wound the balls tightly.  I have no issues now that I wind very loosely - just sort of lay the yarn across the ball as you go, not pulling it at all.

[Real Deal]

If you roll the balls too tightly, they become what I call dead balls. The yarn looks great wound up like that, but will loose it's stretch and bounce, it's pouf. I discovered that dead balls are usually not worth using for anything, but if you really can't stand to throw the yarn away, use it double stranded to make a rug. Maybe many rugs.

 

When you first start to wind a ball and it's small, roll it around a finger also. As it grows and you are turning it, start rolling around the ball and 2 fingers. If the ball gets really big, roll around the ball, 2 fingers and your thumb. That's all you have to do.

 

I never roll full skeins into balls. There's not really any point to it. Our mothers and grandmothers did it because so much yarn was in hanks and was harder to handle, and there was no such thing as center pull skeins. If I had to roll my entire stash into balls, ha, ha, ha, it would take a year! Get out of here!

 

If your yarn comes in center pull skeins, just pull out that center "yarn barf" and loosen it. I leave it for a while to relax and pouf up, then go back later to tidy it up and start working.

 

If your yarn does not say center pull skein on the label, don't assume it is or might be, even if it is a well known brand name. For example, many of the Lion Brand yarns are not pull skeins, so when I use Lion Brand, I automatically work from the outside.

 

I've had 1 pound skeins of Red Heart Super Saver that were incredibly tight. I pull out some yards from the center and let it set a while to pouf. I do it 2 or 3 times, depending on how tight it is. You can tell when it starts to pull out more normally.

 

No matter what, if it's taking too much time to find a center pull, or it tangles too much from a center pull, just begin everything from the outside. The idea of the center pull is that it's suppose to make it easier for us, not more trouble.

[Becky Morgan]

I've had a lot of people give me old overwound balls. If they're acrylic, all you need to do is unwind then, put on a couple of scrap yarn ties and run them through the laundry. (Rubber bands will work, but they don't always survive the dryer.) Most of it gets its bounce back.

 

The thing is, you need to know whether it will before you start on anything big. It's not fun to finish a shrug and find out it's always going to look loose and stringy because the yarn didn't plump.