Most knitters and crocheters that I am aware of take a skein of yarn and wind it into a ball so that the yard will roll off as they work.
Why doesn’t yarn come in a ball to begin with?
Having just wound the World’s Largest Skein (780 meters!) into the the World’s Largest Yarn Ball this question is fresh in my mind.
Yarn is made by a machine. I assume, a machine cannot be programmed to make a ball out of yarn. Much easier to make a skein.
They have machines to make balls, or at least ball-like things that work pretty much the same. The may be better because they won’t roll away when the cat swats it. I’m not sure how to explain what the final product is. It’s kind of donut-shaped. Maybe someone who knows the name will come along and explain better.
It still may be a mechanical issue for skeins. I’ll ask my mother :).
I imagine skeins pack more densely than balls would, thereby reducing transportation costs.
Hm. There’s a thought. I’m not sure. Skeins are usually loosely wrapped, balls are wrapped more tightly - usually a ball is smaller than the skein it came from. But a ball gives you a lot of dead space per box.
Either way, in the absence of proof to the contrary I refuse to believe that we can put a man on the moon but we can’t wrap yarn in a spherical manner.
So it’s a common practice to unwind a skein of yarn and the rewind it into a ball?
Yep. .There are even tools to facilitate it: a swift to hold the yarn, and a ball winder to wind it up.
I never rewind center pull skeins into balls. Hanks, on the other hand (long loop of yarn all twisted onto itself have to be wound.
Thanks, I forgot there were two terms. Is a commercial yarn that’s wound into an oblong shape a hank or a skein? In other words, what do you call this?
Whatever its called, I rewind them. They always get tangled as you pull from center.
That’s a skein. A hank looks like this.
And I personally have no idea why the most common packaging for average yarns is a skein. I know that hanks usually start to show up when you head into relatively expensive/natural/premium-fiber yarns.
My mother-in-law, who is my authority for all things domestic, once told me not to wind yarn into a ball unless I was going to use it right away. She said that winding it can cause it to stretch out, which leaves the finished piece with poorer shape and elasticity. She may have been talking only about natural fibers, but I don’t remember.
Given that I’ve only finished three pieces over 25 years of knitting/crocheting, I’m not sure you should listen to me.
It is true that tight winding can cause a yarn to stretch out, which creates problems when you knit it up.
To avoid this, when hand-winding a ball of yarn, put two fingers under the strands while you’re wrapping them. Remove and replace your fingers every few wraps.
Wool winders on the other hand (the nifty little machines that create center-pull balls–mine is right here next to me) have a large spool that the yarn is wound around; when you take the ball of yarn off of this spool, the inner yarn collapses into the empty space, creating a loose ball.
I always used yarn pulled directly from the center of the skein, rather than taking the time to ball it. I’ve never had any problems with tangling that way, and most mainstream yarn is pretty much designed to be used that way. From a manufacturing point of view, the skein is much more efficient for labelling, shipping, and marketing than balls would be.
However, I’ve had a hard time teaching my kids or my cats how to pull yarn from the center. So if the yarn is destined for kids or cats (rather than knitting or crocheting), the yarn I buy is likely to be rolled into a ball from the skein.
Yarn hanks are used for specialty fibers, and geared towards people who want to use something other than “mainstream” materials. Again, though, a hank would be much easier to label and ship than a ball would be.
Embroidery floss comes packaged in similar skeins or hanks, BTW. Some emboiderers actually take time to wind the skeins onto bobbins (the emboidery equivalent of winding yarn into balls), but I prefer to simply pull off floss as needed. With skeins, this is very easy. With hanks, you have to remove the labels and treat the floss with care to avoid getting tangles.
Then what’s your trick for pulling off the floss without tangling the skein? Mine always tangle. I must be doing it wrong.
First, don’t remove the labels–they hold the floss in place. Take the loose end of the floss (which should be sticking out one end of the skein, rather than from in between the labels) in one hand, and hold the skein loosely by the label closest to the end you are holding. Pull the floss slowly, with resistance against the label, not the skein of floss itself. It’s okay if the opposite end of the skein (and the second label) move up to the label you are holding. The floss itself should pull straight through the label and out of the skein. It also doesn’t matter which end of the floss you pull, unlike yarn.
These instructions may not make sense, I’ll admit. I’ve been doing it for almost 35 years now, so it’s second nature. I tried to teach my daughter how to do it in person, and she never did really get it–but she can’t figure out how to thread the needle, either. If you go to a needlework shop that sells floss though, anyone there can probably show you.
I’ve used your method for pulling embroidery floss, and it always always always tangles.
So far as I know, it is the rule rather than exception for embroiderers to wind their floss onto bobbins. It’s much easier to get at and organize that way (in those boxes) aside from the tangling thing. Plus the bobbin holds a half thread (I’m not sure if that’s the right term – the leftover 2, 3, or 4 threads when you work on 2 or 3 threads) much better than wrapping it around the label of a skein
I don’t. I knit from pulling from the middle of the skein until I get about 3/4 knitted up, then I wind what’s left into a ball.
Mrs Blather owns a yarn store so I got the “straight dope”. Many posters have hit on it already. First, as JayJay mentioned, there is a difference between a skein and a hank. A skein is an oblong ball, a hank is just a yarn wrapped in loops. As several poster mentioned, yarn is kept in hanks so that it does not get stretched. A hank may also be loosely twisted on itself for shipping and storage, but it can be untwisted to be put on a swift.
You can knit directly from balls and skeins. Skeins can be pulled from the center, as can balls that are made using a ball winder (a really cool gift for your knitter acquaintences).
That didn’t answer the question at all, though I appreciate your input. Many, many people rewind the skein (the majority of poeple that I know at least) because it gets tangled coming off.
Why doesn’t it come in balls? Your answer, so far as I can see is, “skeins are good enough” – but they aren’t to many people.
Mrs B says that a centerpull skein (as opposed to a hank) should be good enough, but occasionaly you will run across a non-centerpull skein that will need to be wound into a ball. and that “some beginners think it is neccessary to wind a skein into a ball”. Maybe it’s like the old joke about cutting an inch off the end of the roast.
At Mrs B’s store she winds hanks into balls for free as a service to customers.
