How to Use a Yarn Swift

If you use a yarn swift, it can hold the hank of yarn for you and free your hands to wind a hank into a ball of yarn. You *could* find a friend to help, use the back of a chair, or contort yourself and wrap a hank of yarn around your knees in order to wind a hank of yarn into a ball, but the yarn swift is faster!

First, untwist your hank. It should come to you twisted in a figure 8 shape, and when you take it apart, it will look like a big circle of yarn.

Your yarn swift should be clamped to a table top or counter edge and tightened so that it doesn’t wobble.

Place the circle of yarn onto the closed yarn swift, and open the swift until it is holding the circle of yarn up at a taunt tension. You open the yarn swift similarly to an umbrella, pushing the tightening screw upwards along the center spindle so that the ribs expand and hold the opened hank of yarn in place, then secure that position by turning the tightening screw.

With a pair of scissors, cut the ties around the opened hank of yarn. Those ties kept the yarn from being tangled before it was ready to be wound into a ball.

Find an end of the yarn and pull in order to wind the yarn into a ball. You can wind yarn into a ball either by hand or with a ball winder. We have additional tutorials to explain how to do each technique. You will notice that as you pull the end of the yarn, the yarn swift spins, which makes it easy to wind the yarn into a ball.