Sandnes skeins are definitely designed to pull from the outside and it's inconvenient!

[cimorene]

I was just getting really annoyed thinking about how it is not hard at all to wind your own center-pull yarn cake, so why can't mass-produced yarn balls pull from the center? (They can - there are some brands that do - but most of them don't work very well.) I got annoyed enough to just try a websearch for my question and found this forum discussion:

This is a very basic question, but

"...do you prefer pulling yarn from the inside of a skein or the outside? And why? I usually pull from the inside, but the other day I decided to try the outside for a swatch. I have been used to “untwisting” yarn as I knit, but this time it was ridiculous. I ended up winding the skein into a ball from the inside before trying again. (I have a ball winder, but don’t usually use it for hand knitting projects.) [...]"

[Responder B]: "You're correct, it all has to do with the twist of your yarn. Most commercial yarns are meant to be pulled from the inside, but there are so many yarns out there, that is not a rule set in stone. You obviously added more twist when you tried using your yarn from the outside. A yarn butler would help that problem because it allow the skein to roll off the skein rather than it unrolling and slipping off the end which adds a twist. Some low twist yarns or singles yarn you have to be very careful with otherwise you will completely untwist it and it will pull apart while working. Yarn bowls can be helpful with controlling twist as well."

Oh, what. Oh, UGH, that's so annoying! That makes sense, I guess. It just annoys me.

• Pulling from the center seems more convenient in every respect to me, so why would you design it deliberately the other way? Obviously this isn't self-evident and there must be a lot of people who think it makes more sense or is more convenient to pull from the outside. I hate when my strong preferences are outliers like this because everything is working against me.



• what the hell is a 'yarn butler'? What an annoying term. I could google it but I didn't.



• I know about yarn bowls and I always found the concept a little annoying too, because I carry my knitting around in a bag and the bowl is hard, larger than my bag usually, and also frequently breakable. I typically put the skein in my knitting bag and that usually prevents it from rolling all over the place, although obviously it doesn't have the little loop to catch the working yarn and so isn't as effective as the yarn bowl concept.

Comments

[pensnest]

A 'yarn butler' is basically a spike on a stand. You (apparently) impale your yarn and it unwinds gently as you knit. I've not tried one.

I'm currently working with a *giant* gradient yarn, starting from the pale colour in the centre. It's a good, firm cake and is working well. I like going from the inside, where possible, but if I've wound the yarn myself I tend to knit it from the outside of the ball. No method to me!

[cimorene]

Oh, I've seen those. I definitely have worked with commercial skeins that wouldn't have unspooled smoothly from one though! I have a ball winder, but I don't often go to the trouble of winding my own.

[cimorene]

Although when it comes to skeins, Sandnes and Drops both are very annoying to me. The inside end is usually somehow tangled so that it won't pull properly from the center without stopping to yank on it regularly and I hate that. Which is annoying because they are the most widely available options here with lots of colors for things like superwash sweaters and lightweight merino! (I suppose it's natural that the market is dominated by Norwegian brands here since they're almost next door.)

[stranger]

I looove commercial yarn that's meant to be pulled from the center, yes! Even when I have to fish around inside the machine-wound ball, there's an inside end *somewhere* and then it's easy to get on with. (Until the outer layer is too thin to hold its shape, but that's about 9/10s of the yarn, so not as annoying as it could be.)

Skeins, now... I usually wind them into balls and work from the outside, because the ball rolls around and minimizes the untwisting problem, but that doesn't eliminate it. I should really just wind the ball with a center strand to be pulled out, but often forget. However, knitting from any kind of yarn skein usually introduces a twist that needs to be untwisted every few rows, so there doesn't seem to be a really complete solution here.

[cimorene]

I don't find too much trouble with that issue though because the skein gets moved around regularly and it doesn't really need any extra attention. I think moving the work and the skein and the yarn so I can pull it without anything getting caught or tangled removes any extra twist usually. If I had a totally stationary setup with a bowl that probably wouldn't be the case though.

[anatsuno]

knitting from the center for me in the past has produced very fraught moments when the ball becomes too hollowed out and thin and collapses on itself - less of a problem with 100% or rustic wool but an issue with more slippery fibers. So, out of, hmm, past negative experiences, I now prefer to avoid any chance of the collapse-and-tangle by pulling from outside. But yeah, there are twist issues that I know I should know how to solve and yet always procrastinate on elucidating... Sigh.

[cimorene]

I think this is inevitable at the end of the skein at least the way most commercial skeins are made, but I think it's still less work for me overall even though at that point I have to stop and rewind the remainder into a ball.