New skein--starting off on the right foot?

[graceschneider]

Howdy all,

I have a question I am sure someone can help me with. I recently bought 25 hanks of alpaca chunky. Since it is two-ply I am concerned about starting off on the right foot. I understand there is a way to tell from which end of the skein one should start knitting from. Can someone explain this to me? I made a swift from tinker toys and bought a ball winder from Knitpicks, the swift btw works awesome if you can't afford one try making your own in under 5 minutes So, I can start my yarn from either center or outside of the ball I made. I 'm just wondering, how to tell which way to go, how to knit with the grain so that the thread winds tighter not looser with each stitch. Hope I am making sense. Thanks for your help

[ArtLady1981]

If I'm understanding you correctly, I think you're saying you've already wound 'hanks' into 'cakes' using your tinker toy swift, right?

Or, is your yarn ALREADY balls from which you can pull the center tail to knit, or the outside tail to knit?

If your yarn is ALREADY balls that can be knit from a 'center pull' or from the outside, you DON'T NEED TO wind it further. And if this is so, please DON'T wind it. It puts undue stress on your yarn, or, I should say, unnecessary stress.

Should you work from the center pull tail? I do if I can find the darn thing. If I can't without pulling out a hideous hunk, I just knit from the outside.

I don't think it matters one bit.

With a colorway like NORO, I just make sure that I do the same with ALL BALLS cuz the colorway is distributed in sequence. So I either ALWAYS start from the center pull, or ALWAYS start from the outside.