Taking all your hints about winding yarn to heart, I decided to get started. No time like the present, right? I have no house elves waiting to make my day, so I have to do it myself.
After reading Greta's suggestion of challenging/racing the kids to a ball winding duel, I tried rounding up the teens.
Me: Come on kids, we are going to have a little race!
Derek: (brushing aside his earphones) WHAT? (sharply)
Bethany: .........(silence accompanied by a quick LOOK)
Me: I need help winding yarn and you two are going to help me
Derek and Bethany: laughing as they leave the room, eyes rolling in a way that will make all teens proud
Okay, I know that plan would have worked if they were younger.
Then I think about Emily's idea.
Nostepinne Also a good video here.
I start wandering around the house, looking for a nostepinne substitute. Luckily, I am always out of paper towels, the dowel being free. Why can't I remember to buy them, anyway? Is it denial? No paper towels, no cleaning? Is it loyalty to the planet and it's trees? My own personal crusade?
I digress.
I start the winding. It's fun. It's functional. My family think I am crazy. I am making an egg on a stick. Mom has finally cracked. They knew it would happen. They've been nursing it along all this time anyway.
BUT. It took me 1 1/2 hours. Which, coincidentally is the same amount of time it took me to roll up lace weight yarn. And THIS is my beef with it all. Not the winding. Not the process. Because, as we all know, we should enjoy the process. But at 1 1/2 hours per skein, needing 2 to double the yarn, that is 3 hours of rolling time that could have otherwise been knitting time.
I wish I had never had this realization because then I'd be blissfully winding up mounds of yarn, unaware that I could be doing something else.

Kind of cute, though, isn't it?
Finally a good use for that paper towel holder.
And I have to say, that I enjoyed the process much more doing it this way. Tonight, I'll roll up ball number 2.
I look forward to it.