Many types of yarn come wound as balls and no preparation is needed other than to unwind a small amount from the ball and start knitting. However, many manufacturers are now selling their knitting yarns as skeins and it's necessary to know how to prepare the yarn and wind it into a ball before knitting.

First of all, take your skein of yarn and remove the card tag which will be round it. Keep this for future reference so you know how to wash the item you are making.

Now start to untwist your skein. You will find that it unfolds into a very large loop. Be careful to keep this loop as tidy as possible because if you get it tangled it may take you many hours to sort it out.

Once you have your large loop you have a number of options as to how to proceed. Schoolhouse Press sell a special knitting swift round which you can place your skein for easy winding. Alternatively and more cheaply, you may have a willing family member who is prepared to hold the skein open for you whilst you wind the ball of yarn. If not you can try laying it over the back of a chair or - as I do - open on the floor or on the piano stool or sofa.

Take one end of the yarn and wind it round the palm of your hand. It should not be too tight as you will need to be able to remove it. Keep going until you have enough yarn when taken off the hand to form a small ball.

When I take the yarn off my hand I then hold the wound circle flat and wind several yards of yarn over it to hold it in place. I then fold this in half and keep winding. At this stage you can continue without further adjustments, just turning the ball so that it remains reasonably smooth as it gets bigger.

I like to keep my ball reasonably soft and not wind too firmly in case the yarn stretches because it then might not knit to the correct tension. You should also be aware that some skeins will wind easily into a ball and others tangle dreadfully requiring hours of painstaking work untangling as you go! There's no way of predicting which it will be and once you start you really just have to keep going. However I find an average 100 gramme skein of 4 ply/fingering weight sock yarn takes about half an hour to wind into a ball - not too bad considering the amount of time it will take to knit a garment or item. And you really can't knit from a folded up and coiled skein of yarn.

This excellent reference book has masses of information about knitting techniques. It illustrates all the basic techniques and has a huge range of different ways to cast on and off and increase and decrease. A must for any knitter's bookcase!

This is another very good book which contains reference information on all the basics of how to knit and finish off a garment or item.