Knit a stronger splice join when starting a new ball of yarn Joining in a new strand of yarn can be done in several ways. The best way to hide a yarn join is to do it at the end of the row on garments so they can be worked into a seam. But, not every garment has a seam, and not every yarn join can be worked into a seam on a garment that does have seams. We can change yarns in the middle of a row of knitting, simply dropping the old yarn and adding the new yarn. In intarsia work, we have no choice but to do this, and in the previous article I talked about how to do it so as to prevent a gap in the fabric and weave the ends in almost invisibly. My favorite way of avoiding a bulky yarn join in knitting, is to stagger the join by making a splice join. Why do I like this join so much? Well, it’s an economical use of yarn – you don’t have to leave an extra yard or two of yarn at the end of a row. You can stretch it out to the last possible few inches. The splice join staggers the yarn over a number of stitches, so there’s a continuous strand right through 46
KNITmuch | issue 3
the join, which makes it strong. And, because the yarn ends have been untwisted, the plies are already situated to weave off in different directions as we did yesterday, which, as I demonstrated, gives further strength to the join. Yes, there’s a downside in that there are extra ends to weave in, but if we are investing time and money to make a garment, isn’t it worth the time and effort to make your yarn joins as strong as possible? Here’s how I do a splice join: I work the first ball of yarn until there is about a foot of yarn 6-8″ [15-20cm] of yarn trailing from my hand for a 2 or 4 ply yarn. For a three ply yarn, I leave at least 12″ [30cm] length. For a 2 or 4 ply join, I separate the yarn into two sections, and treat them the same way as for the 3 ply join, but using fewer of the steps.
Cynthia MacDougall
For 3 ply yarn, untwist the yarn coming out of the knitting into three plies and trim them down so that one is the full 12″ length [30cm], one is about 8″ [20cm] and one is about 4″ [10cm]. Do the same with the new yarn from the ball. For 3 and 4 ply yarn, I untwist the yarn into plies and trim them down so that one is the full 12″ length [30cm], and trim the other plies to 3- 4″ [8-10cm] less. So, for the three ply example in the photo, the plies have been trimmed to about 8″ and 4″ [20cm and 10cm]. Then I overlap the ends so that single ply part of the new yarn overlaps all plies of the old yarn and a part of the next section (which in the photo has two plies
Seven stitches knitted with 4 strands of yarn. The strand coming out of the knitting on the right is ready to weave in. For the photo, I left the strands untwisted so you can see that the next several stitches will be knit with 3 plies of yarn; two from the old and one with the new.
The old and new yarns untwisted and trimmed for splicing. The arrows show the different sections, which will be referenced in the text, below.
of yarn). I add a little twist to the length, then knit a few stitches with the old yarn and the extra ply (section 1 of the photo above).