A Tangled Mess I Wove

Note the large, multi-colored planet below, with three distinct moons orbiting nearby. A long time ago, I got a "bright" idea to combine three different colors of yarn into one big ball of yarn. Then, use an extra-large crochet hook to make a thick, quick afghan for Younger Son. I did a dab of that, then it went into forgotten hibernation for a long, long time. His birthday is coming up in less than a month, and I recently decided to use this yarn to make something up for him, much like I did for Older Son (see a previous post), but NOT WHAT I FIRST INTENDED. So it's necessary to undo this combined mess. Well, putting the three yarns together was definitely easier than taking them apart again, because TWISTING and TANGLING tend to occur in the unwinding/winding process. So it's SLOW AND TEDIOUS to undo this big ball of three combined yarns back into three separate colors so that I can proceed with some kind of NORMAL project.

This is what I'm dealing with.

This is what I want to end up with.

But THIS tangled mess is in the way. IT IS A TEST OF ENDURANCE AND PATIENCE.