How to JOIN YARN the INVISIBLE WAY (2 Methods with No Knots!)/wool products

Today I'm going to show you my two favorite ways to join yarn. The first way is kind of gross, so we're going to save that for last. First I'm going to show you the Russian join, which is one of my favorite ways to join yarn invisibly. So let's get into it. I'm going to use this yellow and red yarn to show you how to do it. Normally you would use the same yarn when you're doing a join, but for the sake of this tutorial I'm using contrasting colors. What we're going to do is just lay one strand of yarn over the other, and then I'm going to bring the ends over to the other side so that now the yarns are interlocking. So I just want to briefly go over how the Russian join is done. So what we're going to do is use a tapestry needle. The sharper your tapestry needle is, the better. This one is incredibly sharp. Ow! Okay, sharp, sharp. So we're going to thread up the yarn, and then we're going to use this shorter end to burrow into the yarn, burrowing in like some kind of badger. I don't know if badgers burrow. These two strands will be integrated beautifully, and then we'll do the same to the other side. Thread up this shorter end and burrow it into this side of the yarn, just like a rat or a mole, some kind of gremlin. Burrow it in, and then it'll just be one beautiful strand of yarn, and then both ends will be joined. Okay, it'll look amazing. So now that you know the mechanics of this, let's get into how to actually work this join. Alright, so I've threaded up my red yarn here, and now we're going to start burrowing. Okay, so imagine that your tapestry needle is like a gopher-woodchuck-mole hybrid. It's just a master burrower, and it's going to burrow into this strand of yarn. So we're going to just start right here, where the red yarn meets this yellow yarn, and I'm just going to push my super sharp tapestry needle into the yarn. You really want to catch the entire strand of yarn, okay? So here I'm just pushing it in, checking the other side, okay, it didn't catch too well. Some people find that if they untwist the yarn a little bit, you're able to burrow in a little bit deeper, and I don't really find it to be any better or worse. The point is that you want to get into the yarn, okay? And here we go. So as you do it, you'll notice some bunching on your needle, and that is exactly what you want. That is perfect and excellent. One of the few times in life where bunching is actually a good thing. So I've got a good bit of bunching here. So now what I'm going to do is just grab the sharp part of my tapestry needle, and I'm just going to hold the part where it joins with the yellow yarn, and just pull it through. Okay, there we go. Slightly violent. Alright, and now I'm going to grab the longer strand of yarn, the one that's attached to my ball, and then just pull it down, thereby kind of stretching out that bunching. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. There we go. Okay, so now the shorter end has been integrated quite nicely with our strand of yarn. I can see the end poking out just a little bit right here, and I can snip it right off, and now that strand of yarn has been integrated very nicely. You can barely even see where it is, and here it looks very nice and tight. So now we're going to do the same thing on the other side with this yellow yarn. I'm going to thread it up, and then burrow into the yellow yarn. I'm going to start right here, right where the join is, and then just very carefully start pushing into, burrowing into, tunneling into the strand of yarn. So if you feel like you're not catching the strand of yarn, you can always kind of push back and redo it. Just because it's in the yarn doesn't mean you have to keep going. You can always pull your needle out and start again. So I feel like there's a good amount of bunching here on the yellow yarn. Now I'm just going to pull it through. There we go. Alright, so now I'm going to hold on to the longer strand of the yellow yarn, and then just pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it, and let the shorter strand kind of move down. And now you can see that it has joined beautifully. Look at this join right here with the yellow and the red. It looks practically seamless. When we go down, we can see there's the tail end of our yarn right here, and I can just snip it right off. Now you can't really see the join at all. Once your join is complete, continue knitting. That's the Russian join. Alright, so here's a little troubleshooting tip. Let's say that you are pulling your yarn through. If you didn't start burrowing into your yarn really close to that join, like right here, you'll find that when you pull down on your long piece of yarn, you might have a bit of a gap here. So it doesn't form a beautiful, tight join. There's like a giant hole down here. So when that happens, you don't have to freak out. We can actually move this twist from the smaller piece of yarn up to the top. So this is all you do. You grab the smaller yarn tail, the shorter yarn tail, and you just start bunching it up all over again. Bunch, bunch, bunch, bunch it up until you cannot bunch it anymore. You cannot pull this anymore. And then, hold on to the other side of your join, grab onto the long part of the yarn, and then just pull. Pull down. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And ta-da! Look what magically happens. Now our join is super tight, very invisible, because we've basically moved the bunching all the way back up here. Okay? So that's a really easy way to troubleshoot your Russian join. Animals that burrow, a gopher, mole, groundhog, woodchuck, and rabbit. Alright, now the next joining method is called the spit splice. And that's because we literally use our spit to join these two yarns together. And no, I'm not joking, not a joke, these two strands of yarn will literally be in my mouth in a few minutes. Okay, so let's talk about how this works. So the spit splice has its limitations in that it only works for animal fibers. So wool, alpaca, mohair, camel hair, cashmere, synthetic and cellulose fibers like acrylic, linen, cotton, this method is not going to work for those types of yarns. Alright, so what we're going to do is take one strand of yarn, and we're going to untwist it, basically unravel the plies from it. So I'm just untwisting it right now, and I'm going to pull the plies apart. And it's going to get a little bit fuzzy, I can tell. This is a wool yarn. So I'm going to unravel it about three inches or so. The more you unravel, the more secure the join is going to be. So now I've unraveled one strand of my yarn. It looks so cute and fluffy. Now I'm going to lay it down and take my other strand of yarn and do the exact same thing. I'm just kind of lightly untwisting it. Alright, so I have unraveled my two strands of yarn. They're just really nice, soft and curly right now. So what we're going to do is lay them on top of each other. And now this is where the spit comes in, okay? I'm just going to put this in my mouth. Ugh, okay, so hairy. Yeah, that's my spit right there. I've got all this hair in my mouth. Okay, now what we're going to do is sandwich the yarn together and just rub it in your hands. And the spit combined with the heat and the friction from rubbing them like this is going to felt your two strands of yarn together. So just continue doing this for like a solid minute. And when we unclasp our hands, you will see some magic happen. This beautiful join. Look at that. Look what your spit and hands and yarn have wrought. Alright, so this is basically our join. It has fully felted together here. And if you pull it, it's very firm. It's not going anywhere, okay? So this is the join that we have made. You'll see that where it joins, it's not very pliable or very soft. And that's because the join has been felted together. If you feel like there are very bumpy areas on your yarn, what you can do is just take a pair of scissors and just lightly kind of trim it off. Again, very lightly. You don't want to snip off your yarn. But you can definitely do that in areas where you feel like it's a little bit furry or, you know, a little bit bumpy and not very even. So that is how you join two strands of yarn with a spit splice. Now you've got two ways to join yarn invisibly. Let me know which one you're going to use. Russian join or the spit splice? Like this video if you liked it and subscribe for more videos like this one. I'm Davina from sheepandstitch.com. Thanks for watching, happy joining, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye! So you know how when people knit something and they'll say, you know, this is one of a kind and unique or I put my heart and soul into it? I was thinking that, you know, if you use the spit splice method, then you will literally have a piece of yourself in that knitting. I mean, your spit, right? Your DNA is literally embedded into your knitting. So, you know, the next time you use the spit splice, you can tell your friend or whoever, you know, that this knitting actually has a piece of me in it. And they'll be like, oh yeah, that's really nice. That's sweet. But you'll know that you mean it in the literal sense, okay? So that's just like a weird observation I had I wanted to share. This has been Knitting Observations with Davina. All right, dispatch number one. It's the end of the video. Bye!