Knitting Tools-Day: Bowls

Today’s Knitting Tools-Day topic wasn’t the one I intended, but since my intentions and I tend to part ways soon after we meet despite all our promises to get together soon, we begin my belated second Tools-Day post about bowls.  (This post is not about yarn bowls, which serve an entirely different function.*  I’m talking about bowls, like the kind you might serve a salad in.)

Today’s “tool”, you may point out, is not really.  Truthfully, I didn’t think of bowls as tools until this morning** while I was trying to sneak in a few rounds on a seamless sweater sleeve.  I’ve been using this bowl to knit larger projects for so many years without giving it a second thought, it hadn’t dawned on me that it fits nearly all my requirements for a good knitting tool.  Namely, that it makes the knitting process easier, more efficient, and therefore, more enjoyable.

If you have knit anything that reaches a certain mass which makes it rather burdensome to keep turning over your project for each new round or row, you probably have some inkling of where I’m at with this sweater right now.  I’ve been at this stage for a while because there was a lot of frogging in the last several weeks and I might have given up all hope without this handy wooden bowl. (Well, maybe not really, but I’m sure it would have been a more frustrating experience without it.)

Working on my Arboreal sweater which has reached critical mass. And maybe not coincidentally, reading Endure by Alex Hutchinson

The bowl was rescued from a fancier-than-usual Christmas gift basket we received many years ago.  I initially wasn’t sure how I was going to dispose of the bowl after devouring all the edibles, but my inner-hoarder saw that it wasn’t actually a bad looking bowl and hey, I might be able to make use of it one day.  (The mantra of hoarders everywhere).***

It was the perfect size for a salad bowl but I wasn’t about to vouch for its actual food safety so it was relegated to holding WIPs or yarn that was soon to meet its destiny.  This clearly is not a specialized function that is served only or best by a large wooden bowl, but what I did shortly discover was that setting the bowl on my lap and knitting with my growing project in the bowl meant that those seemingly endless turns of a heavy in-progress sweater, just glided around with very little effort while keeping the bulk of what I knit contained (no flailing sleeves or live circulars getting caught or sat on by anything (or anyone).  The smooth surface of the bowl also meant no pilling from the constant abrasion against my clothing, and as a bonus, minimal shedding onto my lap! (I often knit woolen spun yarn so the shedding is real.)

You probably already have a bowl in your home that could be repurposed into a “knitting bowl” or you could easily find an appropriate bowl new or used.  If you’re wondering how to choose a bowl, I offer a few thoughts for your consideration:

1. The sides of the bowl should be low enough so that you don’t have to raise your arms uncomfortably high while knitting but not so low that your project isn’t contained

2. The bowl should be wide enough so that your project is resting inside and not spilling over the edges

3. The bowl should be able to balance on your lap without tipping over.  Depending on how you sit and the geography of your lap the shape and width of the bowl’s base can affect how well the bowl balances

4. A smooth surface inside the bowl and around the edges is necessary so that your yarn and project are not getting snagged (live-edge wood bowls might look nice, but they probably won’t function well for this purpose)

5. Although I haven’t actually tried knitting out of steel, ceramic, or glass bowls, my guess is that these options are not ideal.  Steel mixing bowls may be too light to stay in place, and if you have any metal needles or stitch holders in your project, I don’t think you want them scraping against the bowl for the sake of your ears and whatever finish is on your actual knitting tools.  Ceramic and glass could be uncomfortably hard and heavy--and they are breakable. Imagine all the ways that something resting on your lap can find itself crashing onto the floor through no fault of its own

6. Wood is my preferred material because it isn’t cold to the touch, it doesn’t make a horrible sound when my stitch holders are dragging along the bottom, it doesn’t break easily, and if you find the right combination of size and wood density, it’s neither too heavy nor too light

I know I can’t be the only person who knits out of bowls but I won’t try to argue it’s for everyone.  Although, I sometimes wonder if some of those knitters who hate knitting seamless sweaters might find that a nice big bowl was all they were missing. (ETA: a phone video of me knitting the final sleeve rounds of my Arboreal Sweater. I would say this is my knitting bowl in action, but “action” would imply something a little more exciting.)

And since I’m on the topic of bowls, I will also give a little love to bowls at the other end of the size spectrum: the teensy bowls.  You probably don’t need me to tell you how useful little bowls can be. I find them especially handy for holding stitch markers, blocking pins, beads, small notions...and veggie matter.  I was once one of those knitters who would reject yarns for containing that dreaded VM but I’ve had a change of heart in recent years. When you know what it takes to clear all traces of VM from wool, you begin to realize how it is currently impossible for small farms and mills to produce a VM-free yarn in an environmentally responsible way that isn’t cost-prohibitive.  I want to support my local fibershed so I’ve come to view VM in an entirely different light. I have an inkling of how difficult and time-consuming it is to remove debris from fleeces by hand so I’m actually pretty impressed by how little VM I find in my locally produced knitting wools.  It speaks to the dedication of those fiber producers.  And really, it requires very little extra time to pick out what little VM remains and I don’t resent it.  In fact, I enjoy picturing those sheep happily grazing and wandering open fields.**** So you may not share my views on VM and you avoid it like the plague, but if you do find yourself unwillingly picking VM out of yarn, I find that a little bowl set within arm’s reach is handier than keeping a garbage bin at your feet.  There are a few reasons:

1. You can keep it literally within arm’s reach so that there is no need for leaning over and possibly displacing your work

2. You’ll find that a piece of VM attached to the parachute of a few loose fibers tends to not find its mark if it’s travelling more than one or two inches

3. This last point is less important, but putting VM in a bowl allows you to always know where that little pile of VM is so you can dispose of it tidily rather than picking it off the bottom of your socks after you knock it onto the floor unawares

So that’s my knitting tool for today.  Not exactly revolutionary or unheard of and, I am the first to admit, not best described as a “tool”.  But it is part of my knitting apparatus that I would not want to do without so there is that.

I’d like to promise you more exciting Tools-Days to come, but while I’m fairly certain I shall post again, I had better not promise excitement. Possible future topics include—sit down if you aren’t already—row counters and stitch markers.

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Footnotes:

*Yarn bowls are used for yarn management, a topic I discussed in a bit of detail here

**Actually, Tuesday morning last but I didn’t finish this post before the turn of the day.  Seeing how irregular my blogging is, it really cannot matter if I stick to a Tools-Day Tuesday schedule, but it’s useful to me to have something resembling a deadline, or better yet, something resembling a missed deadline

***You know you’re a potential hoarder if the mere fact that when one in a thousand of those hoarded items does turn out to come in handy it is sufficient justification for keeping all the other 999 miscellaneous things

****That sounds like romanticizing and possibly wishful thinking, but the locally raised wools I have purchased in the last few years have come from farms that I feel reasonably sure are committed to the welfare of their animals, so I will romanticize away

Knitting Tools-Day: The Yarn Unwinder (or why I will never knit from a center-pull ball again)

Some three four months have elapsed since I first stated that I was starting a series of posts about knitting tools and today, at long last, I begin the first in what I hope will become a series of knitting tools posts. In that first post, I mentioned my love of tools in general and my intent to talk about some of the knitting tools I like but don’t often encounter mention of elsewhere (and when I say “elsewhere”, I promise you I have not scoured the internet to confirm).

Today’s tool topic is, erm, these things:

I have seen various names (some of them trademarked) applied to them but no real consensus on a single term.*  This is possibly because they aren’t as widely in use as I would have thought (at least given how totally awesome I find them.  Although, since I first wrote about these some five years ago, there are many more vendors selling their own versions, so possibly these aren’t as rare as I like to think.)  People seem to like the names “yarn Lazy Susan” or “yarn spinner”.  I guess I still call it a “yarn unwinder” even though it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, because it is at least a bit more accurate than "yarn spinner", which to my mind, is a person who turns fiber into yarn.  I’ll just quote myself and say that whatever you call it, I call it indispensable.**

You might be a little sceptical about how this device is any better than just pulling yarn from the center of a ball or using a yarn bowl--the former being simplicity itself and the latter being prettier.  To address this question, I’m going to talk a bit about yarn management and the issue of added twist before I get to the actual yarn unwinders.

YARN MANAGEMENT

By “yarn management”, I mainly mean how you get your yarn off the ball while you are knitting and, when applicable, how you are taming that ball of yarn.  Are you pulling from the center or are you pulling from the outside end? A center-pull ball is kind of self-managed--the beauty of it is that it calmly stays in one spot (for the most part) while you disembowel it.  If you are pulling your yarn from the outside end, the ball requires taming or at least a long leash. If it isn’t rolling along the floor or being strong-armed to flip over the necessary number of times to allow you to knit a few more stitches, you are probably using a yarn bowl or some other containment device.

Part of the trouble with these aforementioned methods is that unwanted twist is being added to the yarn in the process.

(Although, to be more precise, the center-pull ball is definitely twisting the yarn as it is pulled out, whereas the second method of pulling yarn off the outside is a little more unpredictable because it’s usually just taking the path of least resistance which might not always be causing a twist.  I find the slipperier the yarn, the more likely it is to just slip off the end instead of unrolling). If you are pulling yarn off the top of a cone, it is like pulling yarn from the center in that it is adding twist (or subtracting, depending).

If you require visual assistance, I made this entirely amateur video to try to demonstrate what's happening to the yarn.

THE TROUBLE WITH TWIST

My very first forays into knitting, I would just start from the outside end and pull the yarn off the ball, letting it roll and flip in any old direction.  Then I was introduced to the magic of the center-pull ball and I thought it was pure genius. I sallied forth happily knitting from center-pull balls for years until one day, I was working on a blanket and the yarn was kinking up so badly that it wouldn’t slide over my tensioning finger.  I was forced to untwist the yarn by dangling my project from the working yarn and letting it spin around until it regained equilibrium. By the third ball (of some twenty or so balls), I realised that this was not going to be a practical solution for the rest of the project. I had a lot of time to think about what was happening to my yarn during all those many un-twisting sessions and I came across this post by (the much more methodical)  Tech Knitter. Suspicions confirmed. In order to solve my problem, I devised this little contraption out of K’nex:

(Photos unearthed from the archives.)

I finished the blanket without further incident and I’m glad I did because it has gotten a lot of use in the last several years.  (In fact, I am currently huddling under it waiting for the weather to realize it's now spring.)  My next project was a long cardigan knit from cones and there was no way I was going to risk knitting 1600 yards into an unwearable sweater by pulling the yarn off the top of the cone. (Edit: I discuss the issue of biasing a little more in the video—which I probably shouldn’t have assumed all readers would have watched. In short, a yarn with unbalanced twist can result in a biasing fabric.) Past experience had taught me that a biasing item cannot be fixed with blocking and it won’t end up getting worn more than once. I had to come up with another device (which was basically a cardboard shoe box with a long Sz.13 knitting needle mounted inside) to accommodate the height and weight of the cones because K’Nex is pretty weak when you come down to it.  After those two projects, I decided I would never go back to the center-pull ball.

EVEN MORE REASONS TO USE A YARN UNWINDER

Now, I readily admit that countless people have knit an untold number of items successfully with center-pull balls so what I’m fussing about is those other occasions when your yarn keeps kinking up while you knit, or, worst of all, the knitted fabric biases due to the excess twist.  This alone is reason enough for me to always use an unwinder, but wait, there’s more!

Consider this, when you use a yarn unwinder there is:

1. No fishing around the center of a ball in search of the end

2. No yarn barf

3. No collapsing of nearly finished yarn balls. You know what I’m talking about, those shells of their former selves. The yarn looks so sad like that and sometimes they get into a tangle, having lost their structural support

4. No more satellite center-pull balls. The other bane of the center-pull ball: having to frog something part way through the ball. You make a satellite center-pull ball which you cannot always stuff back into the original ball. The yarn unwinder in reverse suddenly becomes a yarn winder--you simply spin your frogged yarn back onto the ball

(I was already sold at “no yarn barf” but this last one is my favourite.)

(Ah, center-pull balls.  Those were the days.)

WHY YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE AN UNWINDER

I may sound like I’m trying to convince you that you need and will be forever grateful to have a yarn unwinder in your life, so for the sake of a balanced perspective, I should probably mention a few of the potential cons of the yarn unwinder,

1. Portability. These are not the most conveniently portable of devices, but it's not as if you're putting a ceramic yarn bowl in your purse either

2. On the topic of portability, even if you are willing to pack it into your handbag or tote, you will find it rather difficult to knit straight out of the bag. You’ll need to take it out and set it on a surface. This will attract looks and if you are in stealth-mode knitting at the office, this is not your friend

3. Aesthetics. They mostly don’t look as pretty as yarn bowls. Some of the hand-crafted versions are quite nice, but really, especially out of context, they are a bit odd looking

4. Cats. I don’t currently own a cat, but plenty of knitters do. You know and I know that chances are this is going to get batted off the table as soon as you leave the room

5. Sound. They aren't completely silent and the version with the lazy Susan mechanism could drive a person with sensitive ears batty with those ball bearings racing around a metal track. I myself barely notice it, but that might be due to a misspent youth blasting music through my headphones

CHOOSING AND USING A YARN UNWINDER

1. There are two basic types of yarn unwinder.  The first consists of a top portion that rests on a supporting base and rotates freely on the base's spindle.  I call these "free-spinning" unwinders.  The second is built with a "lazy Susan" mechanism that allows the top portion to spin around, hence, the "yarn lazy Susan".  The model I own has a spindle which can be unscrewed from the base for flat-packing.  Whichever type you choose, it should spin very smoothly and not require much force to rotate

2. Whichever type you choose, the base needs to be very stable.  In other words, it needs to be heavy enough and/or wide enough that it can resist the force of the yarn being pulled off the ball.  You don’t want it tipping over or sliding. Even the solid wood versions can start making their way towards the edge of a table so in this case, adding rubber feet helps if there aren’t some already

3. If you want a two-piece unwinder that spins freely on a base, it is really important that the top piece turns smoothly and freely on the base spindle.  Also, this base spindle needs to be long enough and strong enough to hold this top securely so that it doesn't get pulled off while you’re working

4. The yarn unwinder should be set on a table or another stable surface and just as importantly, it needs to be at a height level to your hands or a little higher.  If you set it lower than your work, you’ll find that the yarn wants to wrap around the post and will not feed smoothly. This shouldn’t be a problem if you get a version with a yarn guide. I have seen versions that have yarn guides built in or as separate attachments.  Edited to add: I also recommend placing the unwinder to your right if you carry your working yarn in your right hand and to your left if you carry your yarn in your left hand--it's a small difference, but worthwhile if you find that the yarn isn't feeding smoothly.

5. Do not set it on the floor.  Now the yarn is coming off the top of the ball or cone and the yarn unwinder is no longer doing what it’s meant to do.  In other words, you are adding twist to your yarn and to make it worse, as the ball gets lighter, it will just keep getting pulled off the top of the post because it can’t resist the upward pull

6. If you are working from a larger or oblong skein, the post needs to be longer than the skein and I think this is when the yarn guide becomes very useful. I don’t have much experience working with skeins like this because I tend to wind everything into cakes, but if you regularly work with long skeins or gargantuan balls of yarn, you’ll need to make sure you get something appropriately sized. The ones I have are meant for the typical 50g or 100g put-ups you find for hand knitting yarns so you should look for versions that have wide bases that will prevent it from tipping over while you work or have a means of clamping to a surface

7. When working with coned yarns, stuffing some soft foam inside the cone will help the yarn unwinder do its job more efficiently.  It prevents the cone from wobbling about. If you’re just setting the cone on something like a paper towel stand, don't stuff the cone because you need the lack of friction for the cone to turn since there's no other mechanism helping the cone to spin

8. I recommend purchasing in person or from a vendor with a good return policy. There are a lot of little variations from one manufacturer to the next and you might not find the right one for you if you choose on looks alone. You literally need to be able to “give it a whirl” first!

9. Lastly, this point is about hand-wound balls of yarn. Hand winding a ball of yarn will actually impart a twist to the yarn. So, if you are concerned with added twist, this is important to consider because the yarn unwinder won’t untwist yarn.***

ON A TIGHT BUDGET?

Regarding cost, if this is money you are unwilling to spend but you want to try some version of a yarn unwinder, you have options.  I made low-tech and low-cost versions before I discovered I could pay someone to make one out of nicer materials for an amount that I was willing to part with.

If you want one for under $15 (USD), the Yarn Valet™ yarn dispenser is available through Knit Picks and Michael’s, and probably others as well.  (I haven’t personally tried it out, so I can’t vouch for how well it works but there is a video review here.) If DIY is more your style, you can try hacking various common household items that you might already have or can find at a yard sale or thrift store.  On Ravelry, I have seen the occasional mention of empty CD spindle cases, paper towel holders, standing toilet paper holders, and cardboard boxes/plastic bins with a knitting needle or dowel stuck through it. Tech Knitter has a DIY tutorial for a fairly hefty but very functional-looking version here.

I’ve tested out a few of these DIY options and it can work pretty well but I would say that generally speaking, it helps if you use something to decrease the friction so the yarn can rotate more readily.  For instance, the CD case works better if you can put a large nut (or something like) under an actual compact disc (which I’m going to guess you don’t need anymore in this modern era) and then rest your yarn ball/cake on the disc.  If using a paper towel stand or something that does not have the ability to rotate on an axis, I would probably consider winding the yarn around a cardboard tube and then putting it into place. With all these things, you will probably need to weight or clamp the base or else the whole contraption is coming straight at you.  Let my dented floor be a lesson to all.

(As for using K’nex, I imagine that’s probably not hanging around most homes or at your average yard sale because Lego it is not, so I won’t recommend it even though it worked quite well for 50g balls of yarn and with a clamp to keep it affixed to a table.)

If you want to see some of the options for yarn unwinders available, I made this Pinterest board with direct links.  It's a short list because I intentionally did not include every last vendor I have seen online, but you can take a look at the first footnote below to find a list of search terms to help you look for other products or DIY tutorials.

I may or may not have convinced you that this tool is a necessary one, but personally, I will not be going back to my old ways of the center-pull ball.  Yarn unwinders are tidy, efficient, and highly functional, when used properly.  It's a tool I wouldn't readily give up and I don't regret a single penny I spent on them, which is more than I can say about my yarn stash.

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Footnotes:

*I am a big fan of standardized nomenclature, as well as useful tools, but I don't run the world.  Here's a list of the names I've come across.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are more.  I notice that if you only search one of these names, you don't see all the options available so if you really want to get an idea of what's out there, you'll have to search multiple terms.

• Yarn Lazy Susan

• Yarn butler

• Yarn caddy

• Yarn spinner

• Yarn top

• Yarn holder

• Yarn unwinder

• Yarn dispenser

• Yarn tree

**When I call a yarn unwinder indispensable, I speak of personal preference, not universal truth.  Please don't blame me if it doesn't change your life.

***I still won't be going back to center-pull balls, but, did you know that if you pull the inside end from a hand-wound ball from the right end, it will actually cancel the twist you added when you wound it?  By the "right end" I mean this: if you wound the yarn clockwise around your thumb or a nostepinne (assuming you are looking down at the tip or "north end"), the end that you pull from the center should exit out the south end.  If you were to pull the end northwards, you are actually doubling the amount of added twist which is when things could get dicey.****

****It’s 2022 now and I have had time to ponder this topic some more and I think some follow-up / revision to this article is in order. When I do get back to making content for this website, I hope to do just that. If you have questions or comments about yarn management, added twist, or yarn unwinders in general, feel free to send them my way and I’ll try to incorporate them into the update (when it happens, which is hopefully this year, but no promises). You can drop me a line through this site’s contact form.

Tools-day

You will often find people describe knitting as needing nothing more than two sticks and some string, but let's be real honest here: knitters love their tools.  Needles are tools, of course, and knitters can be quite passionate about them, but they are not the tools to which I refer.  I am referring to all the other accoutrements that you convince yourself would elevate your knitting experience.*

I definitely love tools, regardless of the task.  I love power tools, kitchen gadgets, laundry folding devices--you name it and if it helps me do a job better and faster, isn't cost prohibitive, and (I convince myself) I have somewhere to store it, I'm all over it.  So knowing I'm a knitter, you can rightly assume that I have acquired more than a few things to enhance my knitting life.  Do I believe any of these tools make my actual knitting any better?  I am going to go out on a limb and say yes, yes I do.**

Back in the old days as a student with little spending money, I knit quite happily buying only very few extras, just the basic notions like a Susan Bates tapestry needle, a cable needle, and when I was feeling really extravagant, plastic bobbins for colourwork (which got used for exactly one project some 14 years ago and never again).  But I would devise little "tools" out of common household objects when I thought of something that would make something easier to do (some worked better than others).  Then, with the rise of the internet and the inevitable proliferation of knitting sites (Ravelry, in particular), my eyes were opened wide to the many possibilities out there, both DIY and ready-made.  The truth of the matter is that one doesn't need much more than two sticks and string to knit but tools can facilitate certain steps in the process and that often means more efficient and more enjoyable knitting.  Who doesn't want that?

So as a self-proclaimed gadget junkie, I decided I'm going to occasionally talk knitting tools on this accidental blog*** of mine.  Possibly on intermittent Tuesdays, (i.e., possibly on Tuesdays, very likely intermittently.)  The plan is to discuss knitting tools/accessories that I personally like but rarely encounter any discussion about, perhaps further eroding any possibility that other knitters are going to start reading this blog.**** 

My first official Knitting Tools-day post will be about yarn holders.  I have posted about these before, in a distant time when I thought Tumblr was a good micro-blogging platform.  (I lost interest when I realized that I couldn't maintain a blog even on a micro level.)  It might seem as though I'm just rehashing old material, but two things: first, I have revised a few of my earlier impressions, and second, trees that fall in the forest that no one hears and all that.

Anyhow, all of this is to say that today is not my official first Tools-day.  This is my official statement to myself that I'm going to get right on that, sometime.

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Footnotes:

*These accoutrements are not necessarily costly items.  Whether you have a hand-carved walnut niddy-noddy or the humble PVC pipe version, it's a tool that helps you wind a skein and it is neither stick nor string.

**In addition to executing a task better than it would have been without, a good tool has a civilizing effect on me. And when I'm feeling more civilized, I'm more apt to strive harder for better than "good enough" results and I'm also more likely to have the patience for it if I didn't spend the better part of an hour in a stand-off with a pile of yarn barf.

***Occasional blogging was so much easier than creating real content, which, believe it or not, is still the ultimate plan for this website. But I seem to have a propensity for making plans for the future and keeping them firmly rooted there.

****Which may be for the best because I post secure in the knowledge that no one is actually visiting this corner of the internet. It certainly takes the pressure off.