Friday Fiber Fun: Joining a Chainette Yarn

Hallelujah, it's Friday! It's been a long week, with the Mister on a work trip and school starting, so I'm especially looking forward to a long holiday weekend (that I get to start earlier thanks to my office's closing at 2 p.m. today). Today is also our 15th wedding anniversary, which we're planning to celebrate with dinner out tomorrow.

Today I wanted to share a little photo tutorial of how I've been joining the yarn I'm using for my Quotidian Tee. I cannot take credit for this method, as Mary explained it to me via email, but I know that many people (me included!) learn things best when they're presented visually, so I thought I'd snap a few photos when I came to the next join so I could share. I apologize if these are hard to see, but the yarn is pretty fine; keep in mind that you can click on any photo to make it larger.

The yarn I'm using here is Knit Picks Lindy Chain, which has a chainette-style construction -- think of an I-cord or crochet chain. There are a number of yarns out there with this kind of construction, though they're not all exactly alike. Some are big enough and have enough loops that you can actually graft the ends together, but that's not the case with Lindy Chain. When you pull this yarn apart, you typically get no more than two loops. So the join I'm using is sort of a modified Russian join. To accomplish it, you'll need a couple of needles and a pair of scissors.

The first step is unraveling each end enough to have tails long enough to work with and two loops. What I've done here is put a needle through the two loops on each end, each one pointing a different way, and then threaded the needles with the tail of the opposite skein of yarn.

I pulled the needles through the loops and pulled the tails so that the two yarn ends are snugged up next to each other. Then I pushed the needles through the loops again so that the tails are making a full circle (through the loops of the opposite skein, then through the loops of the skein they are attached to).

The last step is burying the end in the strand of yarn by poking the needle through the strand repeatedly, just like in a typical Russian join. You can see here I've already pulled the needle through on the left and it's still in the yarn on the right.

When the yarn is pulled taut, the join is virtually invisible, and all that's left to do is trim the yarn tails that are sticking out. And that's it! This join is a little fiddly, particularly with a finer yarn, but I've found that it gets a little faster every time I do it.

I hope this is useful for you, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!