A question had come up about the consequences of having a tightly wound cake of yarn. I know that this was something that until I had read this on BeadLizard Silvia's blog, I had never have even given a second thought to! When I read it, I thought "HOW GENIUS!"
"http://beadlizard.blogspot.com/search?q=winding+yarn:
8. Yarn health. Wind relaxed center-pull balls. A tightly wound ball blocks the yarn and when you wash your garment the yarn will return to its preferred length, often making the garment considerably smaller than expected. A tightly wound center-pull ball will also be more likely to burp clumps that proceed to tangle and waste your time. I usually wind from hank to ball, then wind the ball once or twice more to get a soft, squishy ball. If you don't own a ball winder, buy one or go to a friend's house and have a winding party with hers. (Bring cookies.)"
I know many people are aware of this issue, some giving more importance to it than others. But just as there are those who know this, there may be others who had not heard. Just thought I'd share in case there were others who may not yet be aware of this tidbit of knitting knowledge.
And this, another reason my yarn-winding venture of the other night occupied a considerable amount of my evening...
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6 comments:
winding party? when do I show up? ;)
I have this issue too. When yarn comes off my swift, it's usually pretty tight. So I rewind from a cake into another cake to make sure it's loose. Goes pretty quickly but sort of a pain.
OMG I hate this problem. I never saw a tighter ball of yarn than the ball of Smooshy I bought (and had wound) at Purlescence! I had to take it home and rewind it--twice!
...brilliant....
Reminds me of a recent thread I read about how tight some skeins are when bought and how it's good to open them up to let the yarn relax. Thanks for reminding us to show some love to our yarn :) Terry
I totally understand about the yarn ball thing.
I know most people (I think, or at least I've observed in most LYS's) is that they put the skein on the umbrella swift, then run the yarn through the wire with the curly loop then attach to the yarn ball winder & step back to start winding. This works fine, but to does tend to "tighten" the yarn more.
What I do is exactly the same, except that in between the umbrella swift and wire with curly loop, I also loosen the tension by also running the yarn in between my index & thumb fingers the "v" area, and and push forward to allow a "looser" wind tension.
I have soft smooshy cakes each time. Not sure I made sense or not, but if not, let me know and I'll demonstrate on my blog.
Pretty yarn!
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