We love wool wands for a lot of reasons around here. They're lightweight, packable solutions for winding skeins of yarn on the go and they're more affordable than the alternative ball winder option. We love that wool wands require a bit slower pace - it's a craft in and of itself!

Learn to use your new wool wand and see the meditative magic for yourself.

Materials:

• Skein of yarn
• Wool Wand
• Swift (or other apparatus for holding the hank of yarn open, like the back of a chair or a friend!)
• Scissors
• Patience!

Unwind

After gathering your materials, begin by untwisting the skein of yarn. Be sure you're ready to wind because it's tough to get yarn twisted back into a skein once it's untwisted. We call untwisted yarn a hank!

Your hank is one big loop of yarn secured by figure eight ties. Your yarn shouldn't become tangled as long as you move your hank onto a swift, well, swiftly. The back of a chair or onto a friend's hands is another great (free!) way to hold the hank. Unless you have to buy your friend a coffee to persuade them to sit there long enough for you to wind your yarn, lol!

I'm using an amish style swift with adjustable pegs, you can find them on Etsy!

Snip the ties

Once I've got my hank on my swift, I find my figure eight ties. On our yarn, you'll find one colored tie (that helps us tell bases apart while dyeing), two plain ties, and one tie with extra strands on it.

Snip and remove all the ties except the last one, with extra strands. This one has the ends of yarn within it and you'll need those in order to wind your yarn.

On this tie, cut the knot off, remove the figure eight tie and you'll see two ends of yarn leftover. Choose the one mostly on the outside of the skein, we'll use this to wind.

Grab your wool wand.

The setup

We're going to secure the end to make sure we wind up with a center pull skein of yarn. Hold the wool wand in one hand and pinch the end of the yarn to the length of the wand.

Twist the yarn around the guide at the tip of the wand.

Wind the yarn back down around the wand to form an X shape.

Wrap the yarn around the wand 5 more times and scoot these wraps together to give a firm foundation.

Switch the wand to your non-dominant hand (my left) and position the yarn to be wrapped in front of the wand and held in your dominant hand (my right). Now we're ready to wind!

Wrap the yarn in a diagonal from the bottom right to the top left and around the back, ending where you started at the bottom right. Use some tension to keep a tidy wrap.

Wrap in this same diagonal spot 5 times, then make a quarter turn away from you with your wool wand in your left hand.

Wrap in the same diagonal 5 times again. Make another quarter turn. Keep going and you'll eventually grow a little yarn ball. Cute, right!?

You may find that you need to use your thumb or index finger to hold down your wraps while making your quarter turns. This is normal! Find a rhythm and do what's comfortable for you.

Keep going until your swift is empty!

Now you have a little yarn tail that you can tuck into your last series of wraps.

Using the guide at the tip of the wand, pull out the strand you started your yarn ball with. There's your center pull!

Now slip the entire ball off the wand. You should be able to slide it off really easily due to the finish of our wool wands.

That's it! Wind up all your yarn and get knitting, we can't wait to see what you make!