Join a New Ball of Yarn

If the Spit Splice or Russian Join aren't your deal, try just picking up your new yarn and knitting it in.

I like to do this if at all possible at the beginning of a new row, because it seems a bit neater for me, and is easier for me to weave in the ends of the old/new yarn.  Sometimes, however, it may be necessary to join somewhere else along your row.  This is fine.

This is how I do it:  Wrap the tail of the new ball around my finger to keep it out of the way, then, holding the tail from the old ball and the working yarn together, knit 3-4 stitches.  Drop the tail and continue knitting.

Remember on the return row you will have what looks like two stitches where you knit with both the old tail and new working yarn.  Be sure you knit these together as one stitch, otherwise you will be increasing your stitch count.  Weave in loose ends, and you are good to go.

Here is a video.  Happy Knitting!

The Four Year Sweater

Yes, it took me four years to knit this sweater!  But I finally finished last night.  Right now it is drying outside.  I gave it a little bath in some SOAK, rolled in a towel to remove excess water, and then put it onto another towel to pat into shape.

I guess I did ok for my first sweater!  My tension got screwy in the yoke/neck area, it is looser than the rest of the sweater.  Not sure what happened there.  I can clearly see the decrease rounds, and that bothers me.  I also don't like the bunching, and don't know why that happened.  I was hoping it would be nice and flat like the body.  Blocking has helped a lot though.

I made the body longer than sweaters typically are, since the recipient requested it be done that way so when he bends over, .... well, you know!

I am happy this project is done, I learned a lot.  Especially that I don't care for knitting sweaters, and most likely will not make another one any time soon.

I made this with Cascade 220 using EZ's percentage method in the round.  It was really easy, and I am glad I decided to make the sweater this way, instead of having a bunch of parts to seam up.  The underarm seaming was enough for me, even though I love the magic of kitchener stitch.