What do you do when your skein gets tangled? How much time and energy do you put into it or do you just cut and join yarn later?
Thanks,
Rose, knitting since May '07.
OTN a shawl and 2nd slipper
For me it depends on the yarn and the tangle. Sometimes, if itās yarn vomit (you know when you pull from the center and then a glob of it comes out) Iāll work it out. Other times, Iāve just cut the tangle out and then asked my dh to help me untangle. So, I guess my answer is, it just depends 
It never even occurred to me that you could just cut it and start again! Forever Iāve been known to stay up almost all night untangling the beastāI think itās from when I was a child and all my necklace chains would get twisted & snarled.:oops:
Ohā¦the tangled ball is my enemy. I often get into a tangled ball late at night, and canāt put it down until it is fixed. I will only cut the wool when I find that I canāt either find an end, or get to a point where all the twisting and turning is just impossible to follow any more.
I have been lucky enough to have balls that will untangle without cutting, but I think at tops, on the most stubborn of balls, I have had to make up to 2 cuts.
I untangleā¦ I hate having to join.
Shoot it
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I NEVER cut a tangled skeināI sprawl out on the floor and will work on it till itās completely untangled. I find it strangely relaxingā¦of course, that may be a cat thing, yāknow?
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Iāve only cut to untangle once, my cat had made a dogās breakfast out of a skein, and there was no end in sight. Had to make one and go on from there. Annoying beast.
I try very hard to avoid tangles (especially those caused in center-pull balls or skeins) One of the things I do is as I pull the yarn from the center I stop if I feel any ātugsā which indicates that it isnāt coming out smoothly. If that tugs then I look at the yarn to see how it is wrapping, sometimes i have to pull it out enough so that the āmessā peeks out and then I can fix a loop or snag before it makes a huge yarn vomit and tangles all over the place.
I just had to deal with thisā¦ I just got my Knitpicks order the other day, and I undid a hank and hung it from the arm of a chair so I could reskein it for dyeing. About 5 wraps in, the whole thing fell in a heap on the floor.
After doing this :gah: :hair: for several hours last night, I finally called it quits for the night and unfortuantely the magic untangling fairies did not visit my house, because it was still waiting for my this morning.
It took me probably 4 hours to untangle 100g of DK weight.
[I][COLOR=āRedā]Iām new, so in my mind āthe tangleā is part of the learning process of messing up,however after two hrs.of very softly,and with lots of deep breaths, I just couldnāt untangle a new hank,I ended cutting it into several pieces around the knots. Wouldnāt you know this was on the spendy yarn not the lesser expensive stuff.
but,learning my lesson from that I now make balls from the hanks the old fashion way,without the stress,and swearing.~[/COLOR][/I]:knitting:
I never realized how much my skein would tangle. If my 4 yo daughter ao much as breathes on it, I give up trying to untangle and just weave in. But I want a more professional system, so I might re-wind it next time I have a new skein. I was hoping there would be a magical answer here! Ugh.
I recently had the same issue after my dogs got hold of a ball of yarn. It took blooming ages to de-tangle it all but I really liked the yarn so persisted, just picked it up every now and then and spent 10-15 minutes de-tangling it. It is now back in a ball but I think that if I wasnāt so keen on the yarn that I would have just replaced the ball.
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It does look like pretty yarn and worth the time. Iām interested to see what youāre going to make with it now itās workable.
Could we hire you?