Oh Ball Winder, How I love Thee!!

i never blogged about it, but i got a ball winder a few months ago. love love love it!! i got it at Joann's.com with a 50%off coupon, so i only ended up paying 30 bucks for it. i also got some looms clips (which i've been DYING for!) and the knifty knitter flower loom. i have a twelve peg ITA flexiloom, but i wanted a knifty knitter one too, just in case! LOL! in anticipation of losing my job, i bought about $150 worth of yarn from Smiley's. its a great online discount yarn store and i encourage you all to check it out! you wouldn't believe how much yarn i got for the money! a lot of it was in hanks and since i had the ball winder, i got to work winding them all. this ball winder makes outside pull balls as well as center pull balls, which i'm not a big fan of because as you pull more yarn from the center, the ball starts to loose structure and if you don't use the whole ball, then you have this wobbly, half formed ball on your hands. so i usually don't make the center pull kind. but then i realized, if i need to use two strand of yarn at one time, i can pull the yarn from the center and the outside of a ball! i know you're suppose to be able to do this with some skeins, but i've never figured it out an it never works for me. all i end up with is a tangled mess when i try it one those skeins. this way works GREAT for me! so now i find myself winding even my skeins of yarn so i have two points to pull the yarn from. and the yarn is much easier to store now that all the balls are the same height and shape and mostly the same width. when i was messing around with that giant skein of yarn when i was doing the Calorimetry pattern, i just wound a bunch of it into a ball first and then used two strands as one. eventually i'll still run into the wobbly ball problem, but it doesn't happen as fast. i keep the ball winder clipped on one of my TV dinner trays and i use my boyfriend's office chair as a make-shift swift when i need it. i just put the hank of yarn over the chair back and i spin the chair to release more yarn as i wind it. works awesome! i must say, i do love my ball winder dearly!