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I Now Pronounce You….. Yarn and Yarn… or How To Join Yarns

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We’ve all done it. Don’t even try to deny it. Happily knitting along and

WHAM!! Yarn! Gone!

What to do, what to do. Well, in keeping with the Valentine’s theme this week, we’re going to learn how to marry yarns together. And you thought only people could get married?

So, you’ve run out of yarn. You could frog back to the beginning of the row and add in a new skein there, or you could join the yarn where it meets, eliminating both the visit to the frog pond and also weaving in ends later.
There are quite a few ways to join yarns.
If it’s at least 75% wool, you can do what’s called a “spit splice” (easier to do than it is to say!). Just pull the ends apart so they are wispy, lay the two yarn ends side by side going in opposite directions, spit in your hand and rub your hands together vigourously until the heat and friction felt the ends together. (I personally, although a farmer and used to yucky stuff, find this disgusting, but I always have a water bottle handy anyway, perfect substitution!)
You could do a Russian Join, where you loop the ends over each other and then, using a needle, thread the ends back into the yarn, pulling it tight. Hard to explain without pictures or a video, so go here:

http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/knitting-tips.

Tess Knits also has a pretty good page explaning different yarn joins.

Do a Google search for “joining yarns” (I do loves me my Google!) and you’ll get hundreds of websites all just chomping at the bit to show you how to do this most wonderful, easy technique.

Comments

  1. I hate the spit splice as well. I can’t ever get mine to work (even on 100% wool – not superwash). I *love* the Russian join and it’s all I’ve used ever since learning it!

Have you read?

A Shawlette with a Ton of Design Options

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette. 

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up). 

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley. 

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design. 

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like. 

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going. 

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]