crafts: centre-pull yarn ball

centrepull, by me

I stumbled across a thread on Ravelry the other day about How to make a Centre-pull Ball. I was like "wtf?" But I checked it out, followed the links, and decided to give 'er a try. Turns out I love making centre pull balls, and I want to center-pull ballerize my entire stash. I took some photos of the process, because I think it's not entirely easy to follow when you just read it in words. I've seen hand-winding mentioned a few times on Ravelry, most notably here: Hand-winding (that thread has a video too!)
I like centre pull balls because they don't roll around the floor for kitties to go nuts about. Plus there's something exciting about turning a chaotic mess of yarn into a neatly wound, self-contained, regularly shaped "ball".
I basically found 3 hand-winding techniques:

1. Pill bottle
2. Toilet paper roll
3. Thumb

All are described here.
Here's my version of the thumb method:

tutorial, by me

1. grab about 6" of yarn to be the 'tail'. This will be the beginning of your ball when you're all done.
2. hold the 6" tail in your pinky/ring finger while you wind a few loops around your thumb (loosely!)
3. when you've got a few loops, start winding diagonally so you are sort of winding from the bottom of your thumb to your knuckle
4. this photo shows the diagonal wind
5. after winding 4-5 times on the diagonal, grab the entire ball and rotate it slightly on your thumb. Continue winding.
6. shows after some twists. Note that the tail will have to rotate around your thumb. Just watch for it and give it a tug every once in a while to prevent it getting wrapped up in your ball.
7. Extra note: be very careful not to wind too tight. Apparently winding too tight can overstretch your yarn, which will then relax to it's original shape once knit/crocheted, which can be dangerous for certain projects.

Photos 7-9 simply show the progression as I kept twisting and winding.