Ok, I was wrong...

I admit it! Ball winders (in combination with a good swift, of course) are AWESOME! For the longest time, I figured I was good enough at winding balls by hand that I would be just fine without a ball winder... but I was wrong. I mean, I can wind an entire skein of Cascade 220 into a nice little cake in under five minutes!

Let me slow down and backtrack a bit. For X-mas, my lovely mother gave me a Knit Picks ball winder. This one, to be exact:

I was a little dubious at first. "Will this really make winding my yarn into balls faster?" I asked myself. And of course, it did. I got this beautiful cake of yarn in just a few minutes:

Which is now a lovely centre-pull "ball" (if you can call something cylindrical a ball):

I thought it was so cool, I even made this ridiculous video with my ball winder and swift in action (yes, I'm a super nerd):