How to Keep Yarn From Tangling

For this article I picked a topic that is not considered to be particularly interesting, more like a pain in the back. But I decided to tackle it anyway to hopefully find ways to minimize the amount of frustration we all get when our working yarn occasionally turns into a tangled mess.

It seems that all cases of tangled yarn can be put into three main categories – tangling that happens when you work

1) from a single ball of yarn;

2) from two or three balls of yarn (like you do when you double strand the yarn or work in a pattern that requires stranded colourwork)

3) from many different balls (or more often bobbins) of yarn (like you do when you knit intarsia)

Before describing possible solutions for each of the categories I want to clarify one thing – by tangling I mean a knotty mess that usually happens close to the ball(s) of yarn, not the twisting of yarns inside your knitting.

If you knit with double stranded yarn, the yarn will twist and it’s totally fine. You don’t need to straighten the strands to make sure they are parallel to each other. Let them twist.

If you are knitting with a solid colour, the twist won’t affect the look of the finished knit. If you are knitting with two colours, the twist will actually improve the look of your project because the colours will be better distributed.

Now that we determined what kind of tangling we want to fight, let’s see what exactly we can do to minimize it as much as possible.

Now nothing can stop you from playing with colours in your knitting. Have fun!

---

Read the full step-by-step version of this tutorial:

---

FREE mini-course
about three pro knitting methods
that will instantly
elevate the look of your projects
and make you a more skilled knitter

Give it a watch

---

---