I have two mystery balls of yarn that I matched and wound on my ball winder. As much as I like to use up my leftover yarn, the process takes too long. Instead, I decided to try a new approach and wind as I go. I was thinking that I could wind the yarn on a nostepinne, but since I know how to make a center pull ball by wrapping the yarn around my thumb until it gets to a certain size, I just decided to start the mystery ball on my thumb. I had a couple of scraps leftover from an afghan that I have been working on and decided that those were a good start for my mystery ball on the fly. I wound those two, then I had another scrap and added that on. These three pieces were from my project that I work on at lunch, so when I remembered to take the ball home with me, I had additional yarn to add to it. So far, the colors are all in the blue family and I may just use the blues and see how many blues I can join together or will I suddenly make a change and find a color that will coordinate with one of the other colors. (I would like to create the mystery yarn ball equivalent of yelling “plot twist” by adding a neutral color – black, white, tan and then a bright neon colored yarn. Hmmmm???)
Adding the colors on the fly is fun and if I stick with this and choose to do this in the future I might make start a few in different color families like shades of brown, reds and pinks or go full color blow out and add a neutral between each color for a different look. So many possibilities!
By adding the yarns with the Russian join and a few flicks of the wrist, mystery ball grows much faster than stopping and starting when using the ball winder. My tension is sometimes off, especially when I have short sections or bits that may have snags. So far, it is easier to create the mystery ball on the fly, because then my ball winder is available to be used, when I am in between colors that I am adding to the mystery ball.
In a short while, the ball grew easily and I can put it in the yarn bowl while I find more yarn to add to it instead of tying up my ball winder. I’ll keep you posted…
