knitting tip...

 I'm actually embarrassed that it took me this long to figure this out, but I found out how to stop my yarn balls from rolling around the room on me!  And it even looks pretty!

All you need to do: keep the ball in a fairly heavy bowl (turns out my lead-bottomed poor attempts at pottery are coming in handy), and it will just roll around in there.

I hope this helps someone else as clueless as myself out!