Thursday, March 24, 2011

joining a new ball


For many years when switching yarns I left a long tail on both and then wove those ends into the completed project. But after reading numerous Ravelry threads on the subject I decided to experiment with other strategies.

I tried spit splicing on my second scrappy lengthwise scarf but so far I'm not sold on that approach. Maybe I'm not being aggressive enough to felt the two ends properly together, but that join didn't seem very strong to me.

I've also tried and often use the strategy of overlapping the ends. To make the join really strong I overlap the ends of the new and old yarn for quite a number of stitches - usually a dozen or so. But what I find with this approach is that sooner or later the end still pops out of the fabric. Annoying.

Today I'm trying a Russian join based on the instructions from Tech Knitter found here. My hope is that by weaving the end back between the plies, the ends will be enclosed within the body of the yarn and will better disappear into the knitted fabric. Fingers crossed!

3 comments:

Caffeine Girl said...

Let us know how this works! I do the two-end method. It works well, but it is a pain!

Do you think this would only work with 100% wool?

Wanderingcatstudio said...

I spit slice when it's a single ply yarn, but otherwise, I'm a weaver!

Unknown said...

I love the Russian join!