How to use a yarn swift and ball winder.
Hi guys, I'm Kristen and welcome to Studio Knit!
I'm so excited, today we are going to learn how to use what's called a yarn swift and
a ball winder. Now, I did purchase both of these items at my local yarn store, however
you don't need to purchase it yourself. I will have links below if you'd like to, but
you can actually use both of these at your local yarn store with confidence. Now why
would you need to do it? We're used to these balls of yarn that we can knit directly from.
However, if you find some yarn that you just fall in love with and it's in this sort of
skein, if you start just trying to knit directly from it, trust me, it's happened to me when
I first started knitting, it will just become this wild jumble of a mess. So you definitely
want to take yarn in this shape and turn it into a ball. So let's get started! So here
we have our yarn swift. Now we just attach it to a table, there we go, we take our yummy
yarn and we just sort of twist it open, there we go. And it's going to come out in this
lovely ring. It's attached by these little loops so you just have to sort of find the
loops and take your scissors and simply cut them off. Keep going around and here's our
last one, this one actually has the tag and I'm going to keep the tag, I'll show you why
once we're done. And we just go ahead and cut this bit off right here. Okay! So now
it's time to put it on our yarn swift. Simply put it over, we're going to bring it up, it's
like an umbrella. Woo, okay. Just right there, you don't have to have it on too tightly.
Just so that it's around the sides. Okay, now we have our yarn on our yarn swift, we
are going to find one of the ends. And we're just going to sort of make sure that the yarn
isn't too twisted here and now it's time to attach our ball winder. It's this little plastic
guy right here and it also just attaches to your table. We'll just put it right there.
And this red knob is what helps keep it in place. So we have this little arm right here,
we bring him up and pull him out to lock him in place. Okay, so we have our yarn end, it
is time to get winding. We are going to take the yarn end right on over here to our winder.
And attach it right in this area. Okay we are just threading this yarn, hold our yarn
taughtly right here and with this we are just going to turn it clockwise, alright, here
we go! Alright, and we just keep winding in a nice steady pace and the yarn is just automatically
turning that yarn swift for us as we go ahead and turn our crank right here, our ball is
being formed and we are doing great. Sometimes your yarn as it's coming off the swift, it
might be not quite on the edge here, it might be tucked a little bit inside, so don't worry,
just have a little bit of patience, if you need to stop at any time to just kind of see
what's going on right here. Okay, we're just about done. And so it's coming off our swift.
Alright, so now we are going to take our beautifully wound ball of yarn and just simply lift it
off of our ball winder. So I'm just putting my thumbs right here and just sort of lifting
it up with my fingers. That seems to do the trick. There we go, so here is the end of
our yarn I'm just going to tuck that right in there, alright and remember that little
yarn tag, what I like to do is go ahead and just sort of fold it up and put it directly
into my ball of yarn and that way I remember exactly what the yarn is, the lot number,
all that good stuff. So I hope that you are inspired to march into your local yarn store
and use both of these devices with confidence. Hey guys, so I just finished filming my very
own production shoot here at YouTube Space in LA. I'm part of the NextUp Class of 2016
and I have a really fun playlist, all of my friends, my experience, gotta check it out
it's in the description below.
Bye!