Ballin'

Today, I have a little Yarn Hack for you! 

I came across a free pattern for a pretty crocheted flower. It's worked with one ball of crochet thread, but with two strands of thread held together. 

Since the pattern only requires one ball's worth of thread, I didn't want to buy two, just to be able to work with two strands at once. I've tried working with two strands off of one skein in the past, using both the center-pull end of the yarn and the outside-the-skein end of the yarn, but that always results in a big tangly mess. And with the Aunt Lydia's brand thread I wanted to use for this project, I can never find the center end of the thread anyway, with how they tightly wind the ball around a cardboard core.

But I hacked myself a solution that will result in less wasted yarn and less tangles while working with two strands of one ball of thread!  

First, I wound the entire, new ball of thread into a center-pull ball. 

Then I pulled this towel holder out of the Goodwill pile (a counter-top paper towel holder could work, too), and put the freshly-wound ball on it. Then, working from the outside of the ball, I put the outer tail of thread back on my winder, and re-wound the thread until I had two balls of thread roughly the same size. This ended up being more tedious than I thought it would, as the ball on the towel holder didn't want to unwind smoothly. I had to guide it and unroll it by hand a lot of the time, to prevent it from tightening up on the bar. But it worked ok enough for me to do it again next time I need this trick.

I took the two balls of thread off their perches & called it done! I now have two center-pull balls of thread for my flower project. Because I'll be working from the center of each ball, there won't be any tangling issues. And because I'm leaving the outsides of the two balls connected (I didn't cut the thread you see running from one ball to the other), once I'm done with the project, I can re-wind the unused thread into a single ball again. And a single ball of leftover thread can be used for a wider variety of future projects than two balls half that size.

So there you have it! One ball becomes a pair, and leave them attached for less frustration and more possibilities! 

(Yes, I am a 12-year-old boy at heart. ;) )