What is your favorite way to wind a skein of yarn so you can use it. I like to use an umbrella swift and a yarn ball winder to make a center pull cake of yarn.
The yarn in untwisted from the skein, and placed on the swift being very careful to not disturb the structure of the skein (you don't want tangles on the swift). I then cut the yarn ties holding the skein together, and look for an end. Hopefully the end is on the outside of the skein, and not on the inside. If it's on the inside, I have to very carefully rotate the skein so that the inside is now of the outside of the swift, so it will spin easily when unwinding.
The end then goes to the ballwinder. I crank the ballwinder, watching carefully that the swift is spinning freely and there are no tangles. Once the ballwinder is full or the skein is done I take the cake off the ballwinder and weigh it, and make a note of the weight, if its not on the ballband for the skein. The ballband goes into the center of the cake, especially if I'm not using it right away.
How do you do this?