How To Wind Your New Yarn Hank Into A Yarn Ball Without Any Specialty Tools

February 11, 2020

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to wind your new yarn hank into a yarn ball without any specialty tools. Now, if you are going to purchase yarn that comes in the form of a hank, like hand dyed yarn from our Leither Co. Store or our Leither Collection Subscription Box you are going to need to get the yarn crochet or knit ready.

When you purchase yarn from big box retailers, the yarn is 99% of the time ready to use, but that isn't the case with hand dyed yarn. Why? Well the yarn has to be warped (wrapped into long circles) to prepare it to go through the yarn dyeing process. When you hand dyed yarn, you want to the yarn to be able to move in the dye bath so that the yarn soaks up the dye and it doesn't leave unwanted blotchy spots. That is why when you purchase hand dyed yarn, it comes in the form of a hank. If you are just starting out with hand dyed yarn then, I would recommend following this tutorial and winding the yarn into a ball, do remember it is going to take patience to do this by hand and depending up on the yarn weight will determine if it will wind up quickly or take a bit. Like, bulky yarn, that will be super fast because it will have approximately 108 yards but sock weight yarn that is going to take a bit longer because well that one has 400 yards. The yarn weight and how many times you have winded yarn by hand, well be the judging factor in how long it will take.

If you find that are going to be working with hand dyed yarn more frequently then I would recommend investing in at least a yarn swift because you can still wind it into a ball without the winder. I will do a tutorial at a later date on how to wind it into a ball with a swift only, but if you combine this tutorial and the yarn swift and winder tutorial then you can get the idea on how to wind it into a ball with a yarn swift. The benefit of using a yarn swift while winding it into a ball is that the yarn won't move unless you want it to, meaning as the swift is spinning only the yarn you need will come off the swift.

Anyways, lets dive into the tutorial on how to wind your new yarn hank into a ball without any specialty tools.

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So let's dive into how to wind your yarn from that gorgeous hank and into a gorgeous yarn ball! To begin, you are going to need to grab a few items, you will want to grab a sturdy object like a jar, bowl or even a yarn bowl, pair of scissors and of course that new beautiful skein of yarn. Now in this tutorial I am going to show you how to wind this up with a mini skein of yarn, which is a 20 gram skein yarn, that has approximately 49 yards each. Now, place your sturdy object in the center of your work table and then open of your hank and give it a good stretch.

P.S. Yarns this small are typically found in Leither Co. Holiday Boxes.

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Lay your untwisted yarn hank around your sturdy object and make sure that the part of the hank with the 4 strand tie is closest to you. You will find an average of typically 3 ties in your hank.

You will then need to find all the figure 8 ties that are within the hank, there will typically be at least three. You will have one tie that has what looks like 4 strands, that tie includes the figure 8 tie and the beginning strand and ending strand of the yarn. Then the remaining ties will look like they are two strands but they are one that is tied together that you will just need to cut the strand and remove it.

Yarn winding tip: Get in the habit of cutting the strands just below the knot, because when you are cutting the tie with 4 strands, you won't want to cut out any of your yardage.

Now you are going to work on the tie that has 4 strands. Once you find that tie, cut just below the knot. then you are going to pull out the figure 8 and you will be left with the beginning and ending strand of your hank.

Now you are going to begin winding up your yarn into a ball!

Start by wrapping it around your hand approximately 10 times for dk yarn (as shown in the photo). I would recommend the same amount of wrapping if you are using worsted weight as well, less if you are using bulky and about 20 if you are using sock or sport weight. The idea here, is that you want to get a good size wrapped bunch to create a mini ball to begin working with.

Once you have wrapped the yarn around your hand, you are going to want to slide it off and twist the yarn into a figure 8, then fold up the ends of the "8" together and then bunch it into a ball.

Now you are ready to start wrapping the yarn around the "ball" to create a yarn ball.

Now it is time for the super fun part, seeing your yarn ball start to form. You are going to start by wrapping the yarn around the little bunch about 10 times (same concept applies here as it did in the first wrapping above) and then rotate the yarn half way and repeat wrapping until 10 times (or whatever you are wrapping for other yarn weights) and you will want to repeat that until you start to see an actual ball starting to form. Then you will want to cut the amounts of wraps in half and rotate just a little bit to get the yarn to lay evenly around the yarn ball. You will keep wrapping and rotating the yarn around until you have run out of yarn.

Once you have run out of yarn, you will want to tuck you in your tail into the yarn ball until you are ready to use it.

Remember you can wind a yarn hank of any yardage into a yarn ball but the biggest thing to remember is that you will need patience to create the yarn ball because the yarn is going to want to tangle up very easily, so take your time and do it when you have a fresh mind!