aka: “It’s not my job to spend half my knitting time untangling yarn which I paid for”
aka: “If a company cannot wind their balls properly, they should just sell yarn in skeins”
Etc. I have many other raging and steaming titles that I came up with during my hour-long fight with a Zauberball last night.
I was sitting on my couch peacefully, knitting along on my vanilla sock. And all of a sudden I found my yarn in a horrible tangle. I untangled (which took a while) and continued. Only to come upon the same situation a few moments later. The way the yarn was wound into the ball meant that as I progressed, every now and then a section of about 20 loops around the ball would simply come off the ball, and then promptly proceed to tangle itself up into a mess that even the most zealously playful kitten couldn’t create. Again. And again. And again. Trying to take matters into my own hands, I decided to rewind the ball using my ball winder. Well, there my troubles only began. The same thing kept happening, and the yarn would get into such a mess that I had no choice but to cut off the knot and start over with the next section. The biggest surprise came when I reached the centre of the ball. Well, I don’t think that thing really deserves to be called “centre of the ball”. It was just a bunch of yarn (5 grams at least), just kind of shoved in there, following no order or method. You can see it in the lower right corner of the photo above, pretty much as it was when I discovered it. At the end of this nightmare, this is what I ended up with, from what was supposed to be a single 100 gram ball of yarn.
For all their beautiful colours and cool combinations, I have no respect for a yarn company that sells yarn like this. For a yarn that I had been looking forward to trying for years, I am bitterly disappointed. They will certainly not be receiving any of my business anymore.
fridica 
I had bad experiences with wool but not as bad as this one. Thank you for sharing it, at least we already know what we’re not going to buy.
Your really missing out if you don’t have a go at knitting Zauberball.
I knit Zauberball all the time and have never got into this sort of mess. Yes, when you get to a new colour wave it tends to slip off the ball and yes, if your not careful it can get into a tangle (and this yarn does tangle easily) but once you know this, simply and carefully unwind that colour wave and wind it back onto the ball so that you can proceed to knit it.
I have a Zauberball waiting in my stash, maybe I’ll try rewinding it before I start knitting with it.
I knit Zauberball all the time and have never got into this sort of mess. Yes, when you get to a new colour wave it tends to slip off the ball and yes, if your not careful it can get into a tangle (and this yarn does tangle easily) but once you know this, simply and carefully unwind that colour wave and wind it back onto the ball so that you can proceed to knit it.
I feel sorry for you… Maybe you can still do something with it?
At least, as Elena says, thanks to you, we know what we’re not going to buy!
To be honest I just want to throw the whole thing into trash and never see it again! But I guess with time I’ll adopt a more constructive approach :)
Can you bring it back to your LYS? They should be able to give you a new one and get reimbursed from their distributor. That’s bullshit.
It was from an online shop… But to be honest, from some of the comments I’ve dug out online, it seems that I’m not the only person who had this problem (see here, esp comments number 18 and 28: http://www.ravelry.com/yarns/library/schoppel-wolle-crazy-zauberball/comments?page=1). This makes me think that my ball is not an exception, and that the company simply does not care too much.
This is good to know. I did use this yarn once, but I didn’t have this problem. This is the project I knitted with it (http://www.ravelry.com/projects/pckristina/3s-shawl), but perhaps it was not the exact same type of Zauberball yarn as yours. Thanks for sharing your experience with it.
That really sucks about your ball. I’ve had that experience with Araucania sock yarns. At my LYS we joke that children must put the hanks together because they’re always a bitch to wind. I also get infuriated when a company has knots in a ball, especially when they break up a color repeat (Ahem, Mochi).
I have some socks going from their Crazy yarn and it was ok when I rewound it, but I weighed the ball before winding it (to make sure I made even balls) and it was about 6 grams light. Maybe that’s not such a big deal, but when you’re trying to make two balls and match color repeats in a sock, you need every little bit. I wrote the company and they said it could have lost moisture, making it weigh less, but it should still be the right length. Who knows. It was my first time trying the yarn. I have one more ball of theirs, so we’ll see how that one turns out.
I had no such problems with my Zauberball, all went smoothly and I loved it. Rotten luck for you to have one like this!
Re weights of balls and skeins – I think this can be unfair, but equally, *can* sometimes be to do with different conditions between the place where the yarn was prepped and where it’s used. Eg if a skein is wound in a wet place – say Wales, or Singapore – then used in a dry place – let’s say south Australia or Death Valley – the weights will vary quite a bit, because of how wool holds wetness.
Just a thought!
Ouh! That puts one’s patience at a test :( Thanks for sharing!
Ouch. I just had a ball of yarn that was made of maaany single thread segments knotted together – but it was the first time I had a problem with this brand, and hopefully the last!
Oh dear, that’s put me right off, I had been thinking of ordering a Zauberball 100.
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I have just reached the end of my patience with Zauberball, this is my 3rd ball from my stash that I have had similar problems with. Knots – who wants knots in their socks!!! Messy tangles that take hours to undo. Plus real disappointment with the colour range in balls. I have used this yarn often and have made some lovely socks, but the recent ones are a real disappointment. One had 20 grams of black in a muticolour ball, another had over half as one single colour when it should be multicolour. 3 balls have very different weights, 100gr, 95 gr. and 90, this is just not on ! I wont buy any more, which is a real disappointment because the earlier yarn was just lovely.
I do a lot of design work with Zauberballs. Here is my experience with them:
1. I’ve had problems with Zauberballs I purchased in late 2014-mid 2015. Knots, short ball, bad splice, etc. Balls that I purchased earlier than that and later than that haven’t had this sort of problem. The Zauberballs I bought within the last six months have been very clean and the weight was accurate. I don’t know what happened at Schoppel Wolle, but they appear to have fixed the problems.
2. Zauberballs falling apart happens. The best way to avoid this problem is to put the ball on a yarn spindle. It doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it makes it much likely to happen. I have 3 yarn buddies–and I love them!