From Russia with love

No, its not a post about James Bond.

Now I am sure that there are many wonderful things to have come out of Russia but my 2 favourite have to be Vodka (!) and the Russian Join.  What is the Russian Join I hear you all ask, if you are not a yarnie then this may be of no interest to you but if however you have a love of yarn then pay attention.

As a fellow yarnie artisan, I am sure that you will have experienced either this situation, lots of yarn left over (from the same dye lot) from various projects

or loads and loads of little teeny tiny balls of different colours that are neither use nor ornament.  Well no more, enter the Russian Join !

The Russian Join is an invisible way to join ends of yarn without knotting and the sewing in of ends.

Take the end of one bit of yarn and thread a sewing needle, turn the needle back on itself and feed it through one or two of the yarns ply's for about the length of needle, like this

Pull the needle through your yarn leaving a loop or 'eye' at one end and a tail at the other.

Next, thread the second yarn (I am using 2 very different colours to make it easier to see) through the needle, pass the needle through the eye of the first yarn like this

Then weave the needle through the ply's of your yarn like you did with the first piece, you should then have something like this

Now pull firmly on each tail to tighten the 'eyes' and you should have something like this

Now you can snip off the tails close to the main yarn and there you go, an invisible join that is very strong and wont come undone, if you are using the same colour of yarn then it should look something like this

So there you go, you can join all those bits and bobs of yarn together to make a decent ball to work with or you can do what I am doing and make your own ball of colour changing yarn like this

and the best bit is that as I make up the ball, I will forget what yarns have been joined in so it will be a surprise when I make something with it.

This should work with most yarns as long as they are not too splitty, just make sure that all yarns are the same weight, 4ply, DK, Aran etc.

Have fun and enjoy.