Choosing The Best Yarn Winder
If you're a serious knitter who buys hand-spun yarn or other artisan yarn in hanks or skeins, you will surely want to invest in some sort of ball winder, with or without a swift. The ball winder has a shaft or shaft around that the yarn is wrapped, while the swift supports the yarn in such a manner that it can easily be fed on to the winder. Winders can be manual or electrical, made from plastic or wood.
A popular, inexpensive model is the Lacis Yarn Ball Winder, a hand operated yarn winder which makes perfect pull thread balls up to 4 oz. without requiring tubes or cones. Its yarn feeder provides an even flow and forestalls tangling. Positive reviews point out that it's inexpensive (under $30), portable and handles all weights of yarn with equal ease. Less positive reviews bitch it is a little capacity winder, only up to 4oz per ball, that the clamp is too little for some tables, and that you need to maintain an even tension of the yarn feed in order to get a firm ball.
Very similar to the Lacis, is the Royal Wool Ball Winder. It's a little more costly, but seems to be correspondingly more robust. The Royal is designed in such a way that the yarn essentially cannot get caught in the mechanism. It also clamps to a table and works best with a swift.
Nancy’s Knit Knacks makes a slightly pricey industrial quality wooden Ball Winder, mainly designed for the yarn industry, but great at home, too. It is really strong with a large (high torque) wooden handle. The handle is snug to utilize and very powerful, allowing it to wind fast, while making no noise. It can wind balls up to 1 Lb. Or even more.
If your arm tires easily using a hand winder, the Boye Electrical Yarn Ball Winder might be the answer. It swiftly and simply winds hanks of yarn into centre-pull skeins. It can wind thin yarns together to create different colours and thicknesses. Some users complain the yarn is wound to firmly, while others say the opposite, that the ball is too loosely wound. Potentially the answer to the problem lies in adjusting the turn-rate. Other users have moaned the smoothness of the plastic causes the yarn to slide off the end of the tube but lots of users find the speed and ease of an electric winder outweigh other inconveniences.
There is not a big spread of Ball Winders to choose from. Factors that influence which one is right for you include price, volume of wool you want to wind, and space you have available. The important choice is whether or not to abandon Grandma's back-of-the-chair method and invest in some technology to keep your knitting projects spinning along.
Check our overwhelmingly cool site about yarn ball winders here. And look at this post about the Lacis Companywhile you’re there.