Yarn Gone Wild!!

Well, the socks in progress had suffered one of those things that sometimes happen to projects which are ‘take along’ projects: The working ball of yarn had become more of a working blob of yarn, due entirely to mishandling on my part. I had taken it out of my bag and put it someplace stupid and annoying so that I would remember that I needed to deal with the problem before putting it back in my bag to work on some more.

And then Captain Adventure got hold of it.

**sigh**

So, I spent some quality time teasing it back from blob to strand form, and then I had my husband hold the project overhead while I wound the yarn into a ball with my ball winder. Now, when you do this (and now that I’ve put the idea into your head, you know you will!), the yarn between the beginning of the ball and your project will be wildly overspun.

You’ve got to let it unravel.

So I hung the sock in progress over the railing and let it dangle toward the first floor of the Den, where it slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y revolved. My husband, hereinafter referred to as Mr. Engineering Expertise, was fascinated by this whole process.

“The ball would spin faster!” Mr. Engineering Expertise exclaimed. He exclaimed this because he is a bright boy with a keen grasp of aerodynamics.

I said, “Uh…” but the ball was already starting over the rail, lowered by his enthusiastic hand. It was spinning like a top. Whirrrrrrrrrrrr!!

And then it began to slow down, and a test of the strand showed that the over-spin was greatly lessened. So I delicately pulled up the ball, thanking the Knitting Goddesses that the ball hadn’t broken loose and shot all over the house when we dangled it over the ra-

“I think it needs a quick spin,” Mr. Engineering Expertise sang out eagerly. He went on burbling about how the spin was almost out and it just needed a quick and before I could yell “WAIT!”, he gave the center-pull ball a firm tap in the direction he wanted it to spin.

That ball of yarn giggled wildly as it flew to the floor and scurried unsteadily out of sight under the hallway. “Whoooooo! I’m so dizzy! I’m all fuzzily-wuzzily! Eeeeehee hee hee hee heeeeeeeee!”

If it had been wearing a bra, I’m pretty sure it would have pulled it all the way over its head and wriggled its loose bits at us.

**sigh**

In case you were wondering how long it takes to knit up a strand of sock yarn equal to one story plus about three feet?

About half an hour.

If you can stop laughing.