How to split a skein of yarn

Hello everyone,

In this article I would like to show you how to split a skein of worsted weight yarn into two halves. I will now explain you how I do it. If someone has already come up with this idea before myself, then under no circumstances am I to claim ownership of the above method, nevertheless this is my genuine idea as following:

However handy an assistant is to help you split the yarn and wind it up to make a second ball while you're making the first one, they are not always there when we need them. Imagine you've got a thick skein of yarn of a necessary colour that you need to split into 2-3 plies. Please make sure you do not use fluffy or mohair like yarn, as this method may not work there.

In my case I required beige colour yarn that would suit my 1mm crocheting hook. All I had at hand was a ball of YarnArt Jeans (55% cotton, 45% acrylic; 50g/160m) being twice as thick as the required parameters for my 081 Charming Wirch project.

Thus to split our yarn we need:

1. One skein of worsted weight yarn (4-ply YarnArt Jeans in my case)

2. One bare cling film or foil tube

3. One elastic rubber band

4. One plastic bag

Do as following:

1. Place your skein of yarn into the plastic bag

2. Make sure the plies are sticking out of the bag

3. Tie the top of the bag with an elastic rubber band tight enough so that you make a bit of effort to pull the yarn out if the bag, i.e. when you take the yarn by its tip it will not pull out at the slightest touch.

4. Untwist and split the free ends of the yarn into desired number of plies (two in my case). Wind them up onto the tube leaving sufficient space between the two.

5. Stand up and let the bag hang freely down from the tube and commence splitting the yarn. As the plies in the bag are twisted into one, the bag will rotate on its own accord. Hold the plies with your thumbs at the inner side of the tube and wind them up onto each end of the tube.

The yarn in the bag may get messy, don't worry, just make a sufficient hole in the upper part of the bag, take the skein of yarn out, untwist the yarn and put the skein back into the bag. The hole will not hinder your task.

The process of splitting the yarn is never a quick one, however the aforesaid method is ideal for implementation by one person alone. You no longer need a safety pin, which is used in a widespread way of splitting the yarn. Once you've completed splitting the yarn onto the tube, all you've left to do is to wind the plies from the tube ends up into two balls one by one. Thus you will get two finer balls instead of a single thick skein.

I trust my experience will prove useful.

You are welcome to pin it to your pinterest board for later use.