The Best Ways to Join Yarn for Knit and Crochet

These tips will come in especially handy when doing a stranded knitting project like this Fair Isle Capelet! You can see the pattern here.

Once in a while I will search the social media universe to find out what yarncrafting techniques our customers could use help with. During my search I came across this suggestion on Twitter:

Kelly Black @ShortysSutures: Best ways to join yarn when knitting would be helpful. I don’t use a lot of wool, felted join is my fave but not always an option.

I thought this would be a great idea for a blog post and wanted to include tips for crocheters as well. My personal preference when joining yarn for knit and crochet is just to pick up the new strand if yarn. I like to do it this way because I don’t have to wait until I get to the end of a row and it’s optimal for when I am working in the round. Now the question is, “What do I do with those yarn tails and how do I keep my tension even?”. Well there are a couple tricks:

For Knitting: Hold the old and new strands of yarn together for a few stitches (only working from the new one), to help keep your tension even. The two stitches near where you joined the yarn are still going to look loose, but don’t worry we will fix that later. After you have worked a couple more rows use the duplicate stitch to weave in the ends on the wrong side. The duplicate stitch is often used for embroidery but is also great for finishing for a few reasons:

• It will help to tighten up those loose loops.
• It will disappear into the rest of the work to become nearly invisible later.
• It will stretch with the work so you don’t lose any elasticity

For Crocheting: We have a nice tutorial here for crocheting over your ends. I really like this method because you are getting some of your finishing done as you crochet to minimize your work later.

Other joining options that you can use are the Felted Join (which can only be done with animal hair fibers), which you can see a tutorial for here, and the Russian Join, which you can see a tutorial for here. As you experiment in your yarncrafting life you will find the method that you are most comfortable with, it’s totally up to you. If you need any further info we have another post here, with plenty of helpful tips.

Feel free to let me know if there are any other techniques you are struggling with and I will be glad to help. Happy crafting everyone!