Unplying A Skein

I needed to un-ply a skein of yarn to get a DK weight from a chunky weight skein. I was trying to unwind Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky (On sale for $5.99), so the yarn was already wound into those oval shaped ball-skeins. The skein had 4 plies. I took 2 plies and placed them on my ball winder. I took the other 2 plies in my hand. I unwound about 2 feet of yarn from the skein and placed a chip clip to hold the strand in place. I then allowed gravity to untwist the plies, winding up the separate ends to keep them neat. Eventually, I was able to split the yarn into the 2-ply sections that I needed. I wound the hand-wound ball together with the center-pull ball on the winder. Altogether, I took a 153 yd. skein and turned it into 306 yds. If you are on a budget and want to knit socks, I highly suggest using this method to allow frugal use of yarn supplies. You can even split the plies into singles if you wish. It will be a lot easier to split the 2-ply sections after splitting them from 4-ply. If you think about it, you could get a total of 612 yds from one skein for $7. That means you could knit one full shawl or one pair of socks from a full skein of 4-ply chunky yarn. That sounds great to me, as many of the colorways I have seen are nice for men's socks, but look kind of goofy as a thick yarn.