I have been knitting with a lot of fluffy, irregular, or extra bulky yarns lately, but I have been anxious to try this splicing method, called Russian Join, that my sister-in-law told me about.
Last winter, I chose a yarn for a project that turned out to be full of knots when the clerk at the yarn store was winding it into a ball for me. She told me that I can always use the split splice method since the yarn I was using, Unikat (see my yarn reviews), was a partially felted, one ply yarn.
Basically, you take the two ends you want to splice and rough them up a bit. Pull on them and break them so you have a lot of frayed, not cut, edges. You overlay the open edges in your palm and then you spit. Yup, that's right, you spit in your palm across both pieces of yarn. Then you put your hands together and rub them back and forth like Mr. Miyagi. The heat you make combined with your spit felts the two pieces of yarn into one. I was warned however that this method works best with one ply yarns.
Needless to say I was really excited because I hate weaving in loose ends. Plus it was really helpful because the project I was working on was in the round, so that yarn ended up with only a start and stop end!
But, more than that, I finally could share a little knitting knowledge with my sister-in-law who is usually sharing hers with me. Being the eternal internet researcher that she is, she decided to look up spit splicing to see what else she could find out about it. She came across other splicing methods, including the Russian Join, that can be used for multi-ply yarns as well. However, this method is apparently not so great for bulky yarns.
Since I am finally working on a project that calls for a regular worsted weight yarn, not bulky, I was excited to finally try the Russian Join. So, check out this explanation of the Russian Join and hopefully you will find it helpful in your knitting. I found it very easy and I even added an appropriate needle to my knitting kit so that I'm always prepared ;-) I plan to use both methods as much as possible!
1 comment:
I love the spit splicing thing. And, I do use it all the time with multi-ply yarns, too. As long as the yarn will felt, it works for me. I usually only use the Russian Join when I can't spit splice (cotton, silk, etc.), because I'm lazy and don't like getting my needle out.
Post a Comment