Goodness gracious, great balls of yarn

Late this afternoon, while my daughter and I watched Monsters vs. Aliens, I rewound most of the yarn I purchased during Knit Picks Cyber Monday sale. It took me long enough, right?

The process lasted almost the entire movie, which was fairly quick based on the amount of yarn I had. To speed things up, I used the Boye electric yarn ball winder that I’d purchased a few months before…

And while I’ve seen my share of complaints about this product (most seemed tied to people who used the winder with a swift– I wind mine directly from the yarn ball) thus far mine has been doing a good job. Thanks to a 50% off coupon from Michaels, I snagged mine for half the normal price. Which ended up costing me a little over $40. And in my book it’s already paid for itself with the amount of yarn I’ve rewound.

Here in the USA you can use the major craft stores (JoAnn Fabrics, ACMoore, and Michaels) coupons interchangeably. Because of this, I never pay retail price at any of those stores. I always use the 50% off coupons.

But back to the ball winder, the only complaint that I have about the Boye electric yarn ball winder is that it won’t wind large skeins of yarn. It’s not the winders fault, it’s not meant to wind jumbo skeins of yarn. If I wanted that I could have purchased a jumbo winder. But since I don’t have too many large skeins of yarn (outside of my small stash of acrylic yarn) I didn’t think the jumbo winder was worth the purchase. I’ve been able to wind 210 yards of worsted weight wool without too much of an issue. Naturally I can wind more yards of lighter weight…

I’m imagining some people might be wondering why do I even need a ball winder? Yarn companies usually sell yarn pre-wound so why do they need to be rewound, again? The reason is simple, it eliminated the unexpected surprises one might encounter when working with store wound yarn, such as tangles or more knots than normal in store wound yarn. Also, I love a center pull yarn (beginning yarn strand that starts a fiber artists adventure) and that’s not always easily found with store wound yarn.

Rewinding the yarn eliminates those unexpected surprises,  and it also means I get a perfect center pull cake of yarn every single time. 😉