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As most of you know, I am a lace knitter; the photo is of my latest finished project, Sharon Miller's Unst Bridal Shawl. If you don't look too closely, it looks great (and if you do look closely, you'll find any one of several fuck ups). This was my first attempt at knitting with gossamer weight yarn — it's finer than sewing thread — and it was, shall we say, a learning experience. I'll be trying another gossamer weight shawl soon.
One of the challenges in knitting lace is invisibly joining in a new ball of yarn — there seldom is a large enough block of solid stitches to weave ends in as you knit; nor can you rely on there being a line of decreases where one also might be able hide woven-in ends. And, even if those optimal conditions occur in the right spot, with very fine "gossamer" lace the fabric is so open even with a line of plain knitting, that the woven in ends still can be seen.
Additionally, the process of blocking lace can play hell with trying to properly tension the woven in ends.
Because of these difficulties splicing is the usually the best way to invisibly join in a new ball of yarn. This is trick that is great even when you're not knitting lace — it will save you having to hide all those ends when you finish knitting a sweater, scarf or pair of mittens.
This only works with natural fibers, and works best with animal based yarns. Silk and cotton take a slightly different technique as they don't easily grab on to their adjacent fibers and form a felted bond.
The first step is to separate the plies of both ends of the yarn two or three inches from the end. With a 4-ply, as shown, you need to break off two of the strands on each piece. With a 3 ply, you'd break off 2 strands on one piece, and 1 strand on the other — you want to end up with the same number of strands as in your yarn.
Then rough the yarn up a bit to get the fibers to separate out a little. I usually untwist the individual strands and gently tug on them.
Finally… spit on them. Yes, spit — I'm not sure why, probably the enzymes or whatever that makes saliva saliva, but split works best. Overlap the ends of the yarn as shown, lick 'em down good to hold it together, then very rapidly rub the combined strands back and forth between your palms — fast enough to build up some heat. The combination of spit and heat will have felted the ends together.
When you're done, you'll have to look hard — or feel for the wet spot — to know where the two ends were joined together. Give a gentle tug to make sure the bond is good and, if not, apply more spit and rubbing.
The yarn in the photograph was a DK weight alpaca I used for my mother-in-law's Christmas shawl — heavier than what I usually work with, but the spit n polish joins worked great.
There are, of course, several other methods of joining a new ball of yarn that I've learned through the years. While spit 'n polish is my favorite method, it's not always appropriate: it doesn't work for all fibers, and it doesn't work when changing colors. If all y'all are interested, I'll cover some other methods on a later date.
Calendar (Please correct if I'm wrong!)
January 15 — mayim
January 22 —
January 29 — mayim
February 5 — vagranucci
February 12 —
February 19 —
February 26 —