« How to Ball Your Yarn »
Wednesday, December 26, 2012 
When I wanted to learn how to ball my yarn some years back I had a really hard time finding a resource online showing me how to do it. I had asked my grandmother, my sensi of crochet and she didn't have a clue. In the end, I wound up getting a book from the library. For real...
It's not a huge deal and some don't even like working with balled yarn, but I sure do. It's a lot of work up front, but in the end it is so, so amazing becaue you never, ever run into a nasty knot in the middle of a piece. Any knots you encounter, you'll get taken care of while balling the yarn.
I don't always ball my yarn. On some occasions I get home really excited with my new yarn, color, etc. and, more often than not, I wind up having a mess of yarn at the end that is essentially unusable. Once it breaks the skein shape, with my moving it around and cats diving at the pile it's a bad situation that only gets worse and worse.
Luckily, balling yarn is quick and easy. My assistant Max a.k.a. Dummy and I will show you how it's done:
Take your yarn and wrap it around your four fingers as shown above. I tend to go about 10 times around.
Remove from your fingers and fold in half.
Wrap your yarn around the middle 5 or 6 times.
As you turn and continue to wind around, the yarn will begin to form the shape of a ball. Finish through all of your yarn, or if you have several skeins, you can knot in your next and make the ball even larger!
Hope this proves helpful. Happy Hump Day!
Beginner Crochet, Craft Techniques, Tips, Tutorial, Yarn 
Reader Comments (4)
Have you tried one of these nostepines? I'm a handspinner, and have lots of occassions to use this, and it's easier to take with me than a ball winder. AND it will give you a center pull ball of yarn. (A big dowel or a sawed off chair leg, will work just as well as one of these $20+ ones. You can see what they look like, and improvise. Happy winding! http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=MPMmopJHzq4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DMPMmopJHzq4
I an going to give that a go, for sure!!! Thanks, Suzann.
These pictures and your description crack me up. I don't know how many cats you have but I've got 7 who are all 1 year of age or younger and talk about a fun and painful project when I bring out my crochet. When I'm crocheting an afghan they FIGHT for the spot under the blanket on my lap. Oftentimes I end up with 3 or 4 under there. One of mine looks like Max so it made me laugh even harder seeing his "helpful" little paws in the pics there. Very cute, indeed!
Wow - 7 is really a handful, Shauna! I don't know how you manage to crochet anything at all! My little tortie gal likes to hide and chew on the yarn. I'll keep going and run into a wet part of yarn that just suddenly ends. Sneaky little creature!