Stanwood Needlecraft Large Metal Yarn/Fiber/Wool/String Ball Winder - 10 oz

A new knitter here. I wound one skein of yarn into a ball by hand and looked for a better plan! I bought both the yarn winder and the Amish swift made by Stanwood after watching a review on YouTube which compared both cheaper and more expensive models by other makers. I tried it out on two completely different yarns: Blue Sky Fibers Organic Cotton Worsted Weight, and an Etsy 100% Mulberry Silk fingering weight. It was very easy to get set up within 5 minutes and begin winding yarn. The worsted cotton wound quickly and I had the perfect yarn cake at the end. I did 5 cakes without a hitch. The fingering weight silk did begin to wind around the top of the bobbin for a few turns but I think this is user error. The cake turned out to be perfectly useable. Although the notched gears are not covered, I saw little chance that my yarn would be exposed to them or get tangled in them. A non-issue as far as I can tell. Both tools feel well made and sturdy. The place I buy yarn charges $4 per skein wound and the price of this equipment was reasonable enough that after two projects’ worth of yarn it will have paid for itself. Did I mention it is FUN to watch the yarn wind up all neat and tidy while the swift flies around like a windmill? Even my dogs are fascinated!

I just received this Standwood Yarn Winder and I'm very very happy with it. It was easy to use, only one piece to assemble and it wound a worsted weight 100gr/3.5 oz skein into a "cake" of yarn into about 2 minutes. The gears and mechanisms are very smooth. (Yes, the technical term is a "cake" of yarn. Fine by me - I love a good cake!) I had bought another yarn winder, a VTECH (ASIN: B00DKW9F6A) which was cheaper - $20.00 - but the arm (the "distal" wire arm) that is supposed to feed the yarn to the bobbin would not stay up. The yarn kept getting caught in the gears. I returned it. (FYI - returning things shipped by Amazon is very easy. You just repack it, print out the return info and put it with the box. Amazon arranges for UPS to pick it up. UPS puts the actual return label on the package. And I received my refund almost immediately.) Before I bought this Standwood I watched a video on YOUTUBE which shows how to use it. After watching this I decided it was a well made machine worth the price - my total was $65.92 with tax. Here's the link to the video. I suggest you watch before you buy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hWprCmJ_I&list=PLSiuNuWv7q4xEEaKACQm--KJZfVYrS5jc&index=75 PROS: The only assembly is having to lock on the "distal" arm. Easy. It's a well made sturdy machine. It does make large "cakes" of yarn (the VTECH I had bought first did not) and it does it quickly. On other winders the yarn winds directly from the feeder wire (the "distal" arm) onto the bobbin. But the Stanwood has another wire arm called the "proximal" arm which spins around the bobbin as you crank the machine. This keeps the yarn away from the gears. See the image above - the wire arm on the left is the "distal" arm and the one of the right is the "proximal" arm. CONS: The instructions that came with the winder could be better. The YOUTUBE video I listed above has better info. NOTE: Most yarn winders are made to be used with swifts. Swifts hold a hank of yarn and sit higher than the winder and so feed the yarn from above. The loop on the "distal" arm is made with this in mind. You can see from the picture above that the end of the loop points down. I wasn't using a swift but was winding a cake from a manufacturer skein (these always end up tangling which is why I purchased this winder). When the yarn being fed to the "distal" arm is below it the yarn can slip partly out of the loop. I initially held up the yarn to keep it in the "distal" loop. But the faster you go the better the yarn stays in the loop. SUGGESTION: The winder comes with a little piece of plastic that sits between the machine and the crank which stops it from moving during shipping. KEEP THIS. It's helpful to keep the crank in place when you are attaching the machine to the table.

I’m so impressed with this heavy duty large yarn-ball winder. I even purchased a different brand knock off of it hoping to save $50 and it started to make a mess out of my yarn. This Stanwood is wonderful. It’s worth the price. It made a beautiful nice firm cake from my handspun single ply of lace weight Marino wool 70% & Tussah silk 30%. This Stanwood Yarn ball winder is very quiet. It is really solid. I think this is an exceptionally high-quality product that I think will last for many many years. It can handle anything from super thick to lace weight yarn. And I was surprised at how quiet it was. It’s definitely the worth the price don’t waste your money on anything less;they’re not as good.

[Photo: Cake of 608-yard Lily Sugar'n Cream Big Ball 100% cotton yarn in Emerald Isle, wound in under 10 minutes.] I haven’t been knitting long, but long enough to know that winding a 400yd skein of yarn by hand is as close to the definition of “tedious” as anything I’ve ever come across. I usually buy yarn in skeins (not hanks), and while skeins technically don't have to be wound into balls or cakes like hanks do, I find doing so reduces the chance of getting things tangled beyond repair. There were many different winders that all had very good reviews, though I suspect the joy of switching to a winder after doing it manually probably makes many reviewers overvalue the quality of the winder itself. I wanted a model that I could use for even the largest amounts of yarn I've ever bought—the Lily Sugar ’n Cream Big Ball (608yd) shown in the picture—yet still work well for winding up remnants and small skeins. I was ready to select a similar model from Royal when I found this one. Many, many reviews for several different winders made note of the noise produced by winders with metal gears (something like an eggbeater, I would imagine, or even louder). I often work late at night when the rest of the world is asleep, so metal gears were not ideal. When I came across this Stanwood model with nylon gears, I decided to try it. When I unpacked the box, I found a high-quality winder that was easy to assemble using only a regular Phillips screwdriver to attach the outer arm. I bolted it down to the table and tried it out with one of my pitifully hand-rolled balls that I had been working from, and I found that it was a little tight and difficult to turn the crank. That was easily fixed by loosening a screw at the bottom of the core, according to the included instruction sheet. When I did that, it worked beautifully. All my old balls were quickly turned into cakes. Then I started another skein of 608yd cotton yarn, which I was able to wind in under 10 minutes. Yes, five minutes compared to well over an hour by hand! I have found that it's often helpful to wind a cake twice. The first time I do so, the tension tends to vary as I move the yarn from the store-bought skein to the winder, especially toward the end of the skein where it likes to tangle. The second time I wind it, it winds up evenly and beautifully since it's coming from the center of the cake I wound in the first stage. Simply holding the yarn taught (not tight) between the fingers of my left hand and cranking with my right, it takes no time at all to get a cake that's beautiful enough for any wedding. ;-) I've wound various yarns in DK (3), worsted (4), bulky (5), and super bulky (6) weights, made of 100% wool, 100% acrylic, 100% cotton, and wool/acrylic blends. I haven't had any problems with any of them. Working from them couldn't be easier. When you've finished winding, find some way of securing the outer end (tuck it under another strand, wrap it with something, etc) before you remove it, then HOLD THE END in the center while pulling the whole cake up off the core. If you don't hold the center, it tends to fall down through and (maybe) come out the bottom instead. You'll probably have a small amount of yarn at the beginning that sort of "sticks out" the top, but provided you pull from the center, you'll go through that in no time and it will be nice and uniform thereafter. The cakes store neatly, don't roll around everywhere, and are a breeze to work from. I believe this winder will last for a very long time, and there's nothing about it I dislike. It does its job quickly, quietly, and easily.

I have through my share of yarn winders and this contraption has singlehandedly changed my yarn winding life. SO easy to use. SO foolproof. PERFECT and gorgeous cakes of yarn. I have already wound 3 cakes in the time I would have still been futzing with my old winders. RUN TO BUY this! You can see in my photo how chaotic the beige yarn was. I rewound it and forget my words, because the photos speak thousands!

I have previously owned a cheaper, smaller yarn winder that could handle only 4 oz (from a different brand) and the difference between that one and this yarn winder is truly night and day. This yarn winder not only has more than double the capacity but also winds yarn cakes much more consistently than my cheaper yarn winder! Because this yarn winder is also so much more stable, there's far more leniency for when you have to pause your winding (which happens for me a lot if I'm fiddling with knots), which means you still get a very nice yarn cake even if you stop a lot. My cheaper yarn winder could never handle that. Highly recommend if you are fiber arts enthusiast and need a high quality yarn winder. Worth every penny!

While a bit more expensive than many of the other ball winders, it is worth every cent. I have one of the other ones and it was useful but not very sturdy as it constantly slipped from the work top. I had a custom table built and the old one would not work with it due to the thickness of the wood, 2.5 inches (5 cm) thick. This one clamps on easily with room to spare. The wide clamp base with grips holds securely and will not budge once properly tightened. The winding is smooth and not too noisy. I can crank very fast with no problems at all. I have just wound 4 cakes of various weights, from sport to chunky and the operation was perfect for all of them. Threading the yarn is super easy, too. Great quality and priced correctly.

The bulk of the noise in my video is my husband clanking around in the kitchen. this winder is not really louder than the cheap plastic counterparts that swivel the entire spindle in the air. I bought it because I have had difficulty with both my cheap plastic winder and my expensive wooden winder, winding balls of fine fingering, and lace yarns. I make lace shawls and need to wind silk, and cashmere and mohair yarns that are extremely fine. I watched all of the videos about this winder and decided to shell out the hefty price to get it and give it a try. This winder is made in America and is extremely solid, so it seems like it will last a long time. They have a good customer service department in place, and offer replacement parts for the spindles and the cogs; which is why I was interested in it. For my very first test, I opted for a lace weight pure silk thread. On both of my other winders, these very fine threads somehow slip down around the base of the spindle and get tangled up, causing me to have to unwind several feet, sometimes yards, of thread, and carefully start over, IF I catch it that is. This winder was blazingly fast and sucked up my silk yarn in a heartbeat! It wound smoothly and completely with no tangles or slippage. I am very impressed. Some people have complained about the loudness, but it's not that loud. It's not as quiet as my belt driven wooden winder, but it's about as loud as the plastic one I first started with. Actually, my wooden tabletop yarn swift is louder! This winder is so fast, for the first time ever, my wooden swift 'threw' a peg! I may have to get a sturdier swift to keep up with this thing. The 800 yd ball shown in the picture was done very quickly and neatly, but since it's silk, it's a very small ball as yarn goes. You can see that the winder is capable of creating very large cakes of yarn, and it can handle very bulky yarns as well. Good product, great company, happy customer!