I felt like winding yarn

On occasion, I take a day or so and do very little knitting.  When I do, sometimes I play in the stash and sometimes I wind yarn.

Yesterday I wound yarn.  

Yesterdays winding was lace weights and a couple fingering weights. No tension, but not so loose that the ball fall apart.  (Also, much though I think Vogue Knitting is foolish to go strictly i-digital, the spring issue is, once again, a truly wonderful thing.)

I know that a lot of people don't like to wind till it is time to knit. I understand why.  Sometimes, the ball winder and swift combine to make a ball of fibre so tight that you can barely pull the fibre out of the center ball, so tight that every ounce of stretch the yarn ever had is used.  I'd worry about yarn that was under that kind of stress for a very long time and if I wound like that and left it, I probably wouldn't wind early either.

I am the master of the double wind.  Once off the swift and then off the ball for the perfect yarny cakes of goodness. On occasion and yarn dependent, sometimes it goes to a 3 level wind to create the perfect tidy cake.  They only have a little bit of stress and tension on them, much like any nice ball of yarn you would find in the store.  If yarn is caked, it stores so tidily in the square sided bins.  I don't know if it saves room but it makes such a tidy pile that it warms the cockles of my heart.  

I like how cakes of yarn sit so quietly, so well behaved beside me when I work from them.  I can put a few in the bottom of a workbasket and they just sit there waiting.  I like that.

But most of all, I like having it all wound up so that when I get it in my head that I absolutely must knit with x today, I can take it and knit and just have a good time.  If I have to wind everything before I start, that can and has stopped me from working on that project.  When that happens, I usually end up with other things started and a bunch more wee things in the WIPs bin.

My preparation in advance seldom means that I knit with a plan.  Indeed, on seeing a new knit queue organizer program on sale in a magazine, I was repelled.  Trying to follow a knitting plan usually reveals that I wasn't listening to what I really like, but was listening to what everyone else is doing, or what I think I ought to do. A general direction, East, west or south is as much a plan as I need. I prefer to knit on a whim and choose my projects on the fly.

I just like to be ready so that when it is time to fly I can do it with as little effort and as efficiently as possible.