Help with yarn cake

#1

I am trying to think this through to make it not disastrous and knot filled, but it hasn’t worked out yet.

I bought a hank of Malabrigo Sock that I want to use RIGHT NOW RAWR! However, the lady at the fabulous LYS in West Palm asked if I wanted her to do something, I think maybe to work 2 at once (which I’ve decided I really don’t want to do) so she re-did the cake somehow so that the center pull is the 2 ends of the yarn and the end around the cake is the center… does that make sense? How can I arrange this so I’m just working with 1 strand again that will hopefully not be unpleasant for me? I’ve considered rehanking and all that, but the 2 ends at the beginning are sort of messing with my head.

Thanks!

ETA: I just had a thought involving 2 empty toilet paper rolls… but it falls under unpleasant… but that would probably work, eh?

#2

I don’t know what you mean… :?? But can you wrap one end around the skein and just use the center one? Or you can rewind the center pull ball. I use the instructions here at KH. I think it’s in the tips section.

#3

yeah it was kind of hard to explain, sorry, but i can tell you i’m already regretting this venture LOL

what it was (I remember now) is she saw I had been working on a toe-up sock and this way of winding the ball makes it so that you have 2 equal separate balls. I also recall now she said to get a friend to simultaneously re-wind with me. If I’m not mistaken, what she did for me is do the normal winding using the swift and winder, and then from that cake, she took the center pull end and the outside end, held them together, stuck the ends on the winder and re-wound again. (Pretty sure that’s what happened.) So I have a double stranded center-pull ball where the beginning and ending ends of the hank are the center pull. (or I did before I started with the toilet paper rolls, disaster.)

#4

Wow, that sounds tasking. Don’t get caught in the knot! Keep a breathing hole in there.

What I might do, … I hope I never have to:

find the longest straight distance in your appartment.
Place the yarn roll on one end and unwind the double strand all the way down to the other end of the room, the hallway or whereever you are.

Now go to the end and start with one end. Make it a nice tight coil.
While doing that, keep the other end that you are not winding tucked tight at the end you pulled it to (place something ontop, make a slip knot or something…)

The strands will be twisted together so you may need to grab around that strand a few times to untwist them. Do you know kite flying with double lines? to find out if things are really twisted or just a little you seperate the lines on the open end as much as your arms allow you. That moves all twistst to one end and you can roll a bunch before you even have to deal with the untwisting.

When you have reached your yarn cake you put that ball down and go back to do the other end. That is now a straight roll-up-job.

Then you start over again.

That will be work, but it remains un-entangled.

#5

Oh boy. Honestly I’d rewind it myself. It won’t be easy because you’ll always be pulling out two strands.

Without seeing it my thoughts are…What I’d do is make two cp balls. It means cutting the yarn at the center point, but that’s a small price to pay for ease of knitting. Pull out the two strands for a bit…maybe on the living room floor and start winding one then the other. Pull out more yarn, wind some more…Eventually you’ll get to the end and you can cut and have two skeins OR you can now take the second ball and wind it around the first one from the outside.

This is all convoluted and off the cuff so… :zombie:

#6

I recently had a similar problem, I had a ball of bulky yarn that I liked the color but did not want the bulk. I sat in a chair and put the ball between my feet. I then pulled the yarn from the center, one strand (end) in each hand. As I pulled up I passed the yarn over to the out side of each leg, making sure that the yarn plied neatly.

Once I had pulled all the yarn out of the original cake and had two neat pile I carefully wound the piles in to cakes for later use.

#7

well, since i unfortunately started the toilet paper roll thing, i’m stuck with that for now, but then have to again re-roll once that’s complete (but should be able to use a winder at least.) I almost finished, but I guess either because of the nature of the yarn being wound like that or because it’s been sitting that way since April (or some combo of both) the strands were very tightly twisted upon themselves making it deeply frustrating.