Winding a Center Pull Ball Tutorial

I have been meaning to post this ever since I posted about my hand dyed yarn and haven't gotten to it, but since I posted yesterday about my first ball of handspun yarn, I decided to finally do it!



gather supplies: laundry basket, sit and spin, chunky book, hank of yarn



Put laundry basket upside down on sit and spin (I had wrapped it on it in preparation to dye it, also) so that it spins when you pull on it



wind yarn around book, leaving the end stickiing out




Close up view




wrap around core to secure




Once you have enough thickness, start "criss cross" wrap around ball




All done!  I didn't quite get the  core covered




my 2 balls of hand dyed yarn.  The one on the left isn't as neat as the one on the right, but it will still work!





Let son play with sit and spin when you are finished with it!







My Very First Handspun Yarn!

While I am working on figuring out the settings on my spinning wheel to get it to wind onto the bobbin, I continued to spin on my drop spindle.  I had separated my Coopworth roving and was using about ¼ of it, so when I got to the end of that, I decided to quit and ply it.

my spindle full of singles yarn

I used this to unwind the spindle so I could ply it back onto the spindle

my spindle full of plied yarn

Rolled into a center pull ball

Yarn stats:

• spun on a bottom whorl drop spindle out of Coopworth roving
• Andean plied on 5/30/11
• ~26 yds
• ~1.75 oz
• ~9 wpi

Hand Dyed Yarn

With all this left over Easter egg dye, I couldn't just dump it!



I dug out a skein of white wool yarn and un-skeined it (is that a word?)




Tied it loosely




dipped each "corner" in one of the primary colors and microwaved for a minute, rested for about 5 minutes, and then microwaved another minute




primary colors done




dipped remaining white areas in the secondary colors




Isn't it beautiful??



Hung to dry

since I still had dye left, I did my last skein of white wool, too!

I don't know for sure what I'll use the yarn for since I hope that I don't have to make any more wool pants!

My Wool Yarn Stash

I think I have enough wool yarn! Since I have all the wool longies/shorties from William, I don't really need to knit any more for Andrew. Although I will need to knit some shorts for next summer since William was only in wool for 1 summer (I have him in training pants with plastic attached since the cloth only ones don't have elastic at the legs which doesn't work well for the poopies!) I also would like to make at least 1 more sleep sack (so I can alternate)

Here is the stash!

This is all Paton's Classic Merino (most bought on clearance) except for the bottom row, which is 100Purewool.

First 2 are "Paprika",

Last 3 are "Camel"

The yellow was used for waistbands on the Yellow Jacket pants I made for the 3 kids, so is mostly full. The next 2 are small leftover bits from making the pants. The next hasn't even been wound into a ball! The last is "Gentleman" and never used!

2 balls gray heather, 2 balls black, 2 balls white

(all new)

The colors showed up weird for these, since the first 3 are hunter green, then a royal purple, last is "Denim Marl" (also all new)

These are my partial skeins.

1st was used for ½ of 1 leg of Little Fire longies, 2nd was the waistband for the same pair,

3rd was just the cuffs on Tie Dye longies,

4th is pretty used as I made shorties with it,

5th is mostly full (I think I made a pair of breastpads)

After I took the picture of my stash, I remembered about these!

On the left are Lion Wool from Wal*Mart I got on clearance, the ones in plastic bags I got for $1 each, planning for Patriotic longies.

Even after making some newborn shorts for right away, some more sleep sacks, and shorts for next year, I think I will have a lot of yarn left! I guess I could make something for reenacting, but we haven't done a lot of that lately! I think I need a brainstorm!

Dryer Ball Problems!

After using the dryer balls for awhile, they started unwinding. Most of the time it was just a little loop that needed to be re-wound, but then I had whole balls unwinding! I think that the wool that I used has to be a superwash wool that doesn't felt! These did help cut down on static, so I guess I have to put some money into it and get some wool that really will felt!

Dryer Balls

I decided I wanted to make some wool dryer balls. I had heard that they help cut down on static and drying time. I decided to use acrylic yarn for the center and not "waste" the wool yarn!

I had 3 skeins of this coral-ish, rust acrylic yarn, so I decided to use it as the centers.

The wool is some of the scratchy mystery wool that we tried to dye with natural things.

I started winding centers until they looked about right and went on to the next. I was aiming for 4, and ended up with a little 5th one.

The majority of the centers are 7"

Here is one wound with the wool next to a center.

I got 2 out of each of the lighter colored wools and used the entire red-ish yarn on the smallest center.

I put the dryer balls into these socks to felt them. But it didn't seem to work very well as the yarn wasn't sticking to itself. So I stuck them into mesh bags for a second try

I didn't tie the bags well enough and they all came out! One had its end come loose, but this one was a mess!

This is what they look like after the 2nd washing and drying. The yarn is still not stuck to itself, but they did shrink some.

Sweater Longies Number 3

I have had a couple of sweaters that I got at Goodwill that I'd never used and I decided to go ahead and make a pair of longies out of the arms of them and then save the body parts for the new baby.

Here is the sweater

I added a gussett to add width in the crotch.

The gussett pinned in

.

The gussett sewn in.

Ready to sew the front and back seams.

Zig-zag the edges.

I sewed a casing on the top and added elastic.

William modeling the finished longies.

Tie-Dye Yarn Longies

I have sidetracked myself from my Tie-Dye Yarn longies so many times, I decided I should update you on where I started!

I used left over dye from tie-dying t-shirts to dye some wool yarn.

The yarn was balled up and ready to knit on August 20, 2008

Here was my progress on the longies on Sept 5, 2009.

And finally finished on January 10, 2009! I knew I was going to run out of my tie-dyed yarn, so I bought a coordinating color (its actually a bright turquoise color) to make wide cuffs to make them long enough.