Center Pull Yarn Ball

You can work a skein of yarn as is if you prefer. However, yarn can sometimes come in hanks that need to be turned into balls or cakes before you work with them. You can use a ball winder to make a nice even cake of yarn. There is a downfall to the ball winder: It isn’t very portable. If you are out and about and want to use a hank of yarn, creating a center pull ball by hand is useful. You may also find this to be a nice method for making small balls of yarn for colorwork. 

Put the yarn tail across the palm of your left hand, leaving a bit of a tail past your palm, and hang onto it. Then with your thumb and index finger, form a V-shape. Now you are going start creating a butterfly by wrapping the yarn in a figure eight around your thumb and index finger several times. With your right hand, pinch the middle of the butterfly and pull it off of your fingers. Put your left index finger in the center of the butterfly and fold the butterfly so that one end is on top of your finger and the other is below, and hold it in place with your thumb. Keep holding the yarn tail with the other fingers of your left hand as you work the next steps. This tail will be the tail you pull from the center.

Start to wind the yarn around the butterfly and your finger several times. As you wrap the yarn around your finger, you will need to rotate things from time to time. Rotate by wrapping at a slight angle. Then gradually turn the portion on your finger as well. Continue to wrap at an angle and rotate the ball that is forming around your finger. Keep your finger in the center as you work and your starting yarn tail back out of the way until the ball is the size you desire or all your yarn is used up. You can now pull the yarn tail easily from the center of the ball.