That, my dear sir, is a pile of yarn barf

One of my favorite knitting quirks (because I know we all have quirks that we favor among others) is that I love spinning a skein of yarn into a ball.

First off, skein is not pronounced skEEn, it's pronounced skAYn. I agree with you that it's dumb to pronounce it that way, but alas, the knitting gods have deemed it so. Secondly, this is what a skein on top of a ball (this specific type of ball is called a cake) looks like:

YOU ARE LEARNING SO MUCH ABOUT KNITTING! If you leave me your address I will come to your house and pat you on the back. At some point during my earliest convenience and in a completely non-threatening way.


Most people think this quirk is crazy because it's a pain to wind the skein into a ball. It involves a solid 15-30 min of sitting in one spot and not moving for any reason. Even if the building caught fire, you'd be amiss to move. Because if you do, then you get something that looks like this.

That, my good blog readers, is one of the biggest knots I've ever dealt with. I'd like to blame it on the yarn, but it's all my fault. The trick with winding yarn is patience. That means going slow sometimes. I don't like to go slow at anything. I read fast, think fast, move in with boys fast, knit fast, finish work fast... you get the jist. Usually I wind yarn into balls as a sort of therapy for me, but I was feeling pretty down about not having a job and worrying about money. Ergo, yarn knot.

The trick to straightening out a honking mess is to gently pull the knot apart. Normally you can find sections that can easily be untangled. I'm really good at untangling knots.

But I was not in the mood for that yesterday. Instead of being patient and kind and loving with my yarn, I just cut off the knotted part and started with the ball I had wound. It's for a shawl (which is a whole other rant that will be saved for tomorrow).

Do you hate untangling yarn? I'll do it for you for a nominal fee. Because I'm a philanthropist like that.