So I blogged the rest of my recent Portland trip on my personal blog, but I wanted to post this one here to show off this awesome mad science invention. This is an actual yarn baller that was running at Knit Purl, a Portland yarn store. You can’t really see it, but the yarn is running from the big spinning thing to the smaller one. The angle of the ball post ensures the perfect alternating diagonal wrapping pattern on the yarn ball. The big complicated-looking scaffolding contraption in front is just a freely rotating wheel; there’s a little motor on the ball end that’s driving it via the yarn, much like the drive chain on a bicycle.
Aren’t contraptions awesome?