I just spent half an hour detangling some seriously knotted yarn.
Yarn detangling isn’t boring; it’s just tedious. It’s interesting to note just how tangled your yarn is, and wonder at how you got it to be so tangled – but that interest wanes quickly, and then you detangle your yarn while thinking I don’t know how I got myself into this mess but I promise, I will never ever be so stupid again.
And it must be done. Whether you do it today, put it off for months, or chip away at it a little bit at a time, your yarn has to be detangled and stress-free, or you can’t really make good knits. Making good knits is key to a happy life, I find. When my yarn is tangled, I am unhappy.
Why do it now, you ask, checking the timestamp on this post. Why not wait until a reasonable hour to detangle your yarn?
Because, I reply. I need this yarn for a particular project. Without this yarn, I cannot advance, I cannot make this a good knit, I cannot start on other projects until this one is done, so I cannot form good knits with other yarns. This yarn is my focus right now, and I want to finish this project. So I do it now, and do not let myself procrastinate on such an important issue.
No, I don’t want to detangle my yarn. Like I said, it’s tedious, and sometimes downright upsetting. But I must, to have a happy life, a whole and healed soul. So — sometimes by myself, sometimes with a little help from my friends — I sit down and begin to pluck away at the threads, feeling something inside me loosen with each knot I undo.
Well said. I need not mention that replacing “yarn” with “topic currently on reader’s mind” works well too. 😉
Thank you. Yes, I was originally going to write about detangling yarn on my knitting/everyday life blog, and then it occurred to me how it could apply in other areas. And then it became apparent this was Brighid nudging me into understanding another one of Her mysteries — She has a few surrounding yarn and fibercrafts.
Knitting and crochet stitch the world back together, like bones knit to heal. But you need your yarn in order before you can heal anything. Ie, I need to work on my issues before I can move forward.
Anyway, I decided to keep the wording ambiguous. I figured it would have more impact that way. 🙂
Ever detangled an electrical chain of lights to decorate a Christmas tree? As I did this a couple of days ago – you know the way a bunch of lights has to pass a circle of cable to detangle – I thought ‘this is cool, it’s like the lights passing a birth canal and getting born…’ 😉
That is a very awesome mental image. Thank you for sharing that with me. 🙂
I’ve detangled xmas lights before, but mostly only gotten shocks… ^_^