You know when you have one of those tasks that seem oh-so-simple in theory? I just had to stop what I had planned for this afternoon and moan to you all about a mutiny in the ranks.
For all those of you who are fellow spinners, this following little piece will be very familiar.
For those of you out there who are not spinners and who imagine that yarn wrangling involves sitting out in summer orchards in floaty Laura Ashley frocks (yes, I am that old!); gently spinning a pliable thread as soft as swansdown from a smooth, even-tempered fleece while birdies sing over your head.
Then plying the singles in a matter of minutes into evenly-balanced, obedient yarns.
Skeining, washing, drying and winding the yarn into submissive little spheres that will happily sit waiting to be turned into tasteful garments.
Well I have news for you - you didn't reckon with the Malevolence of Inanimate Objects!
Firstly, I must tell you quickly about Paul Jennings who wrote in The Spectator in 1948 about "Resistentialism" - although the idea had been around a long while before that as anyone who has come across Messers Murphy and Sod will know well.
Resistentialism is the concept that inanimate objects have a secret life of their own and are able to get up to spiteful behaviour in order to make our lives difficult. They are plotting mischief and have got it in for us!
The great and good Mr Pratchett suggested that this behaviour may be under the command of Anoia "the Goddess of things that stick in drawers".
So why the preamble?
Because yesterday afternoon I decided it would be "nice" to wind the yarn from a skein using my mechanical yarn winder to make useful centre-pull yarn cakes. See, maybe that's where I went wrong - the skein of yarn must have heard me saying "useful" and that sowed the seeds of rebellion!
It all started fine . . . . oh famous last words.
After two and a half hours of crawling around the floor unpicking knots and tangles and mazes; threading loops back through themselves; and a lot of truly unprintable bad language, I had the prize of one small centre-pull yarncake.
As of lunchtime today - after Round Two and another hour and a half this morning - yesterday's small yarn cake wound and one still on the winder.
(You can see the thread going from the winder to the skein off to the left of shot).
The insolent, spiteful yarn monster octopus skein that I still have to deal with!
Round Three seconds out! Ding, ding!
Update:
I finally got the darn thing untangled and all wound on at 11.25 this morning (Tuesday 8th April). I wasn't going to let it beat me.
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