Being a yarn dragon with no knitting focus, I’ve knitted from all kinds of things. I’ve knitted from skeins and cakes from both inside (ugh, yarn barf) and outside. I’ve knitted from a scrapped project, from coils I’ve wound up, from totally crazy tangles (not recommended). And then there was that one time I tried to knit from a loose hank. TOTAL disaster.

Anyway, for some reason, I rarely knit from balls, so when I bought a pattern today and decided to use some yarn I’d unwound and coiled up on my hand, I thought since it was actually two different colored strands twisted together, I’d better separate them in advance and save myself some frustration. I ended up going with balls.

It started off as a de-stresser. I turned in a monster of an edit today, which is always stressful due to the sheer size, so I needed some time to relax my brain, and I figured this was just the thing.

What a shitshow.

See that rolled-up mess on the left? That’s only half of it. The rest is neatly balled up, but before I took this picture it was an even bigger snarled mess, like my hair after a shower. Turns out, undoing two twisted strands is about as easy as putting a leash on a chicken.

I’m at three failed attempts at the chicken-leash thing. No, really.

Anyway, I untwisted until I was ready to get the matches and set the yarn on fire. Then it finally got easier, and I balled up the darker blue…

For seven hundred hours.

That’s approximately how long it takes to wind up 437 yards of sport-that’s-more-like-fingering yarn. When it came to the light blue, I just stuffed the little ball into the leftover cake and called it done.

Now to do another Totally Super Fun Thing and knit a gauge swatch. *scream*