Have You Tried the Russian Join?

Weaving in ends is one of the things about knitting that a lot of knitters don’t enjoy. It’s a necessary evil, particularly in large projects or projects where the color changes often.

I usually just weave in my ends the old-fashioned way, but if I’m working with wool I’ll sometimes do a “spit splice” (I don’t actually spit on it, though, I use water to felt the ends of two balls together).

Another option is the Russian join, which is a way of sewing the ends of two balls together. There’s a good video tutorial at BHooked Crochet if you haven’t seen it before.

It works best on plied, natural fiber yarns (because they hold together a little better). Brittany says she’s skeptical about the strength of a join made this way, but I think if you don’t pull on it too much it’s OK.

I like the idea of using this join if you were making a magic ball, or a larger ball out of small odd balls that you wanted to use in a project. Not having ends to weave in would be great, and it eliminates the need to tie knots to join all those odd balls together. I’m definitely going to try this soon and will share the results with you!

Have you ever used the Russian join? I’d love to hear your thoughts and all about when you use it.

[Photo via BHooked Crochet.]

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I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

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