Example: I cast on for a pair of Jaywalker socks (Ravelry link) in a beautiful mystery yarn. It's a sport weight wool sock yarn that I got at Knitter's Connection and by the time I got home I had lost the tag. It's gorgeous and probably the softest yarn I've purchased. BUT it pills like crazy. If you breathe on this stuff it generates chunks of fuzz.
Anyway, about 3 inches into the first sock, it was a hopeless mess and the tangles in the yarn were causing me to curse just about everything in sight. I had wound the cake myself on a nostepinne, but my skills with the nosty have vastly improved since then so I frogged and rewound. Though I am better, I'm still not perfect so the cake ended bigger on the top than the bottom - a perfect little cupcake!
I left the ribbing of the sock un-frogged because it was kinda cute as a cupcake wrapper.
I actually love winding my own cakes. Since I'm on a student budget (and I do mean budget), I like getting a couple more hours of enjoyment out of expensive yarn. The rhythmic repetitive motion is soothing much like knitting a stockinette tube is. I got the nosty here. The rest of my winding setup was part of my house already:
kitchen chair, digital scale, comfy couch. I find that the knob on the top of the chair works rather well for keeping the yarn organized. Quite honestly I have less trouble with the chair than the employee at one of my LYSs had with the swift last time I was there.
Unfortunately, I am moving into an efficiency apartment at the end of the month and both kitchen set and comfy couch will be gone. So I think I'll be winding like a madwoman for the next week!
