Nostepinne
I've been checking out ball winders for some time now, and while they aren't insanely expensive (not all of them anyway) I haven't been able to settle on a model. I don't remember exactly where, but I read somewhere about a nostepinne (nostepinde) and that it was used for ball winding. This is possibly common knowledge to seasoned knitters, but I'm self-taught & still relatively wet behind the ears -- what's a nostepinne?! Thus I started snooping around online to find out what this thing was. It's basically a little wooden baton that you wrap yarn around -- nothing more, nothing less.
Check it out...
Lo-tech! Awesome. I haven't actually gotten one of these yet, but totally itching to try this ball winding technique I started using the handle of a rubber mallet and it works great. The only trouble is that the mallet is heavy and unwieldy making the process a bit of a workout. That said, I wound close to 10 balls of yarn this weekend just tidying up the stash. I party hard.
