Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite poster? No, really. I’m serious. C’mon, would I kid you? No, no…really, it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re married to my equivalent of a crack supplier. Nothing at all. Nope… 
And in Portland, too. 
Neat, I tried that, and it worked! (Seems my grandma didn’t know what she was doing.) No more tangly floss, here. Thanks!
It boils down to the fact that skeins are easier to package, ship, and shelve than balls are.
Skeins are tube-shaped, making it easy to add a product label (or two, as in the case of embroidery floss) to identify the manufacturer, the product, the color, and the lot number, without needing a lot of sticky stuff that could potentially damage the merchandise. You can’t put that kind of information on a ball nearly as easily.
You can fit skeins easily into rectangular boxes, without wasting space, mainly because they are squishy. (Sorry for the technical terms here.) Balls are generally not very squishy, and tend to leave a lot of excess space around them when they are packed in boxes. Therefore, you can fit more skeins than balls in any box of a given size.
Once in the store, the skeins can be easily stacked on shelves in plain view of the customer. While they are often put into rack-type shelves, they do not need to be. Balls, on the other hand, tend to roll off of shelves very easily, which creates clutter in the store, and has a higher risk of damaging the merchandise if the yarn should come loose of the ball as it is rolling.
I did try putting floss on bobbins at one point, but it seemed like it used up a lot of the time that could be better spent actually stitching. I also couldn’t see how bobbins were any good at storing cut lengths, and I have no problems simply pulling what I need off the skein when I need it.
I use small craft zipper plastic bags to store floss, with one color per bag. Cut lengths go in the bag with the skein, so they don’t get separated, and I know what color is what. I put holes in the corners of the bags, and put all the bags for a given project on a loose leaf ring, with the colors in numerical order. I take the color I am currently using off the ring, so that if I have to stop, I know exactly what I was doing the next time I pick it up. It keeps the floss neat and clean, and makes it very easy for me to find a particular color. I also do some very complicated designs, sometimes with dozens of colors, and this is the only system I’ve found to keep myself organized without wasting time just being organized.
If it were in balls, it’d be a pain to weave with. Besides, don’t we want the yarn to be as fluffy as possible. Wound in balls might make it thread like.
I think it would be because if you stack balls on a display stand they would be more liable to get knocked over by customers.
then why not put the ball of yarn in a nifty wee box with the labels on the box and a wee hole on the top for the yarn to feed through?
the boxes would pack well and you would have all the label room you need and it wouldn’t get the yarn tangled and dusty on the shelf.
Because boxage is an additional expense that the spinner doesn’t HAVE to go through, and there’s no major outcry for pre-balled yarn that would justify going to that expense. You also have to remember that except for the major manufacturers (Caron, Lion Brand, etc) an awful lot of yarn suppliers are small family enterprises that raise their own sheep (alpacas, goats, etc) and spin the yarn on a small scale. There isn’t near enough profit margin as it is let alone introducing a major retool in production.
The square box would still take up more room than a skein of the same amount of yarn, not to mention the additional packaging costs that jayjay mentions.
I use Kiminy’s floss-pulling technique and rarely have problems. I don’t like bobbins either, for the same reason. One thing I pay some attention to is the way the thread is going–I always thread it going the same direction off the skein and store it so that I know which end is which. That way, you can stitch in the direction the floss was orignally spun in, and the floss doesn’t get so fuzzy. It stays fairly smooth. I know it sounds boring and obsessive, but I don’t have to think about it, I just do everything the same way all the time.
Unfortunately, but proudly, the worlds largest skein is a bit larger than 780 meters. Last year i was happy to help Pluckyfluff make the worlds largest hand-spun skein of yarn totaling a whopping 10.5 miles. She just started the process of getting it in the guiness book. You can see it in the process on you tube, or at the Pluckyfluff website. It is also being shown this weekend and next week at the 1st annual Yarnival!! at Boeger winery in california. If you watch the video, this is the guy in the green over-alls.
So would a ‘skein of yarns’ be another way of saying a pack of lies?
This is a really funny old thread for me. I’ve learned a lot about yarn since then!
FWIW, everyday yarn here (Norway + Scandinavia in general) comes in loosely wound ball, while skeins is usually reserved for fancy stuff. Don’t know why.
In my experience, sometimes embroidery floss skeins cooperate, and sometimes they don’t. I do like the floss bobbins, and they don’t take very long to wind. I haven’t embroidered in a while, and I need to get back to it. In a perfect world, there would be a floor lamp using a natural sunlight bulb, that would also contain an arm with a magnifying lens on it for embroidery fans with aging eyeballs.
~VOW
Firstly, if they were sold by the balls, when we would ever get to use the word skein?
Second, why the paucity of balls jokes?
Third, we resurrected this thread on thread to talk about the world’s largest skein, but I see no mention of the world’s largest balls.
eta: also something about zombie balls
Well, rmilo has pretty big balls to resurrect this thread just to promote his video.
When you buy yarn you want to see the colors, the repeat if it is patterned, feel the texture etc. If the yarn is in a ball it is harder to feel because it is tight and to gauge the squooshiness or softness you’d have to unwind it. With a skein or hank you can just grab and squeeze-like charmin.
The larger surface area of a skein also shows the colors better especially if there is a pattern. If there is a long repeat or the color is slowly graduated it is possible for the outer layer of yarn to look nothng like what is inside.A long skein is more representative of how the yarn will work up when knit or crocheted.
I would go to a Yarnival based on the name alone. It sounds like pun!