Recently I wrote a post about the Magic ball explaining how you can connect yarns with a Magic knot.
This technique is very fast and discret but sometimes you want to be sure your yarns are well connected and that’s when the Russian join comes in. Also it never hurts to know different methods to do the same thing! 😉
The Russian join is a very easy but extremely useful trick to know. It allows for two yarns or ends of a same yarn to be securely joined and saves times on weaving in these ends later.
It’s particularly useful when joining a new yarn in the middle of a row of a lace shawl because it’s nearly invisible. Be careful though if you have pre-strung beads on your yarn because it’ll slightly increase the dimension of it, making the beads too small to pass.
Like the Magic Knot, it’ll be more effective on a non-slippery yarn like wool but it’ll give better results than the knot on slippery ones like cotton.
Want to learn how to do it? Continue reading!
Take the two ends you want to join. (For this exemple and to make it clearer, I’ve used two different and contrasting yarns. You can certainly do it when joining another skein of the same yarn for a seamless join.)
Choose a needle with a big enough hole for the yarn to pass but with a sharp point. Thread your working yarn.
Using the needle’s sharp point, pass it through the plies of the yarn. You will be forming a loop.
Then thread the new yarn on the needle and make it go through the loop you’ve just created.
Once again, using the needle’s sharp point, pass it through the plies of the yarn.
Tighten everything by pulling on the two threads. Cut the unjoined threads.
If you want to add an extra security, you can roll the join between your hand which will felt everything together.
Easy no? And so useful! Hope you had fun learning a new technique!
