No, not people named Hank. I mean those torturous wads of yarn which require winding into a ball before any sane person can use them. Whose evil idea, apparently before the beginning of recorded history, was this, anyway?
I remember seeing homey pictures of old-timey housewives winding yarn from the hanks their husbands patiently held before them as they sat (and presumably chatted) by the fire. Well... I don't have a husband OR a fireplace, and I find the winding of these things into balls to be exquisite torture. So much so that I refuse to buy any yarn ever again that comes in hanks.
The machine-wound loaves of yarn are fine... they unwind on their own and the pattern of winding is fascinating in itself. It's the damn wads of fiber like that shown above that kerfluffels me. I've tried knees, feet, and the backs of chairs, as well as cardboard boxes and drawers...nothing makes the winding go smoothly. No matter which direction I start from, there is always that moment when the hank takes on vengeful human characteristics and twists itself just a leeeeeetle bit...just enough to compromise the unwinding. I've learned to take some deep breaths and NOT pull on it--that will only tighten the potential knot-loop and/or draw up one end of the hank into an absolutely unforgiving wad of intermingled strands. At that point the only thing to do is apply the business end of a pair of scissors and put up with little knots in the item this unsolvable puzzle will eventually become.
Feh.
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