The Easiest Way to Join Yarn Ends: Russian Join Tutorial for Crochet & Knitting

In today's tutorial we're looking at how to do a Russian join. This is an easy way to join two pieces of yarn that doesn't require any knots or weaving in ends. Let's jump right in and take a look at how it works. So I'm going to begin by cutting just some fresh tail ends, which will make the whole process a little bit easier. Now let's just say that this darker blue end is the project that I'm working on. This is the yarn that's attached to the project I'm working on and then this lighter blue end is the yarn that I want to add in. And so I'm going to start with the dark blue end and I'm just going to get the yarn on the needle there. And now what I'm going to do is leave just a little bit of a tail end and then I'm going to, into the working end of the yarn, I'm going to run my blunt yarn needle in between the plies of yarn. And so you can see here that if you just gingerly move the needle through the center of the strand of yarn, you go right through the plies of the yarn. It's worth noting that this technique does not work well for unplied yarn, so that would be any yarn that doesn't have a twist to it. Examples of unplied yarn are roving wool, chenille, anything that's faux fur, it wouldn't work for those yarns. You don't want to do this for too far because this method does have a little bit of bulk to the join, area of the join. So once we've got about that much, what we want to do is just carefully pull the tail end through. So I'm going to get the tail end, you can see it in the middle of that loop there. The loop is what we're looking for, okay? So I'm going to pinch right along here and just pull the tail end through. And once you can get it out, you can just go ahead and set down this side, and then leave that loop just right there. Okay, so now we're going to thread the other tail end. Now before I go ahead, what we're going to do is do the same thing with this side, but the first thing I need to do is thread this yarn through this loop. So we're just going to bring it through. Okay, so now I've got my loose end on this side, and then this is the working end of the yarn. And so I'm going to take the blunt yarn needle and go through the working end of the yarn. And we're going to do the same thing. We just carefully work right through the middle of the yarn, just separating the strands, the plies of yarn with the blunt yarn needle. Okay, great, that looks like enough. And so now I'm just going to carefully pull the needle through again. Feels like this side is the tail end. Maybe? Nope. There we go. Okay, now we're going to get the needle off of there. Now you can kind of see what's going on here. So what I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to tighten the tail ends of both sides, and that's going to join them together really neatly. So just pinching up that gather of yarn there, pulling the tail end nice and taut, again with the opposite side. Now at this point, what you can do is just smooth out the plies that you gathered. And you can see that is a nice tight joint of yarn that's not going to come undone, and it's not too much more bulky than the actual strand of yarn. It is a bit, but not by much. So at this point, you can see the tail ends are still just sort of dangling there, and all you need to do is trim them. The edge of where you trim the tails is going to be the bulkiest part of this. Okay guys, so that is the Russian join. If you found this helpful, please don't forget to like and subscribe. I will see you in the next video.