I was on the receiving end of a day off work Monday. This coupled with the Grandparents corralling the kids for a portion of the day led me on a WINDING FRENZY. The cooler fall temperatures have set in and I’m absolutely craving more hand knit sweaters.

So obviously the only logical thing to do was wind two sweater quantities of yarn!? The top lot is my Treasure Goddess Yarn DK Treasures and some newly aquired Hedgehog Fiber Merino DK in the Deep End colorway. I hope to turn these skeins into a Radiate by Jojo Locatelli. My expanded ramblings on this obsession can be found here.

The second lot is the Malabrigo Rios I purchased on Local Yarn Shop day. Its the Fresco and Seco colorway and I hope to turn into into a Weekender by Andrea Mowry.

I know some knitters don’t wind up their cakes until their cakes until they ready to knit it. But in this house I just don’t have that time luxury. So I have adopted a technique to try and negate the “stretching” that happens to yarns under the tension of sitting in a cake.

I hand wind the skeins into a loose ball (right) and then use that ball to wind on my ball winder into a cake. I use my free hand to monitor and keep consistent but gentle tension on the yarn as it goes into the cake. So far this this has worked for me and none of my yarn seems worse for the wear even after *cough* years *cough* of sitting in a cake.

Do you have any idiosyncrasies about winding yarn?