I Love a Puzzle

And a good thing it is, too. I was working on a pair of socks last night, peacefully sitting on the couch and knitting, when, all of a sudden, the yarn goddesses delivered a huge punch!

I think I'd better set this up a little more. I had purchased a skein of lovely wool/alpaca/nylon (for long wearing-ness) sock yarn last week. I had not wound it into a ball at the yarn store. In fact, I had not even thought about winding it at the store. This was mostly because it was closing time when I purchased the yarn, though I'm sure the staff would have had no problem with my staying to wind the yarn - they probably would have offered to wind it for me, but I just didn't think to do it. Anyway, a good friend offered to let me wind the yarn on her ball-winder, and I took her up on the offer. I could have wound it by hand, but it's 450 yards of fingering-weight yarn - it's a lot faster to wind that much on a ball-winder than to do it by hand.

OK, so I was innocently sitting and knitting on these socks when I gave a tug on the working thread. Then I pulled harder. And harder. Here we go, I thought, I'm going to end up pulling a chunk of yarn out of the middle of the ball. I had hoped to avoid that by winding the skein on a ball-winder, but you can't win them all. Oh well, I thought, it's not too bad, I'll just have to wind a little yarn around the ball. I wound up the extra that I pulled out and went back to knitting. I knit up the extra and then gave a tug on the working thread. Then I pulled harder. And harder. Oh no, not again! Oh well, it won't be that bad. Wrong! This time, instead of pulling a walnut-sized chunk of yarn out of the middle of the ball, I ended up (though I tried not to) pulling something like 80% of the ball out of the middle! What was left couldn't really be called a ball at all - more like a shell.

So, now I'm sitting on the couch with this incredible hairball of yarn in my lap, and no way to proceed with my knitting except to unwind it and wrap it around the remains of the ball. That wouldn't be too bad, except for the little phrase "unwind the hairball" there. You'd think that, since the ball was wound on a ball-winder, it would be easy, but no, remember it's the yarn goddesses delivering a smackdown, and you don't get off easy with them. That yarn was thoroughly tangled, and, for a while, trying to untangle it just made it worse! It took me at least an hour and a half to undo the hairball and get it wound up. All because I tried to avoid winding a skein by hand. OK, yarn goddesses, I hear you, I will not defy your edicts again. Next time, I'll use the ball-winder at the store :-)