Knitting 101: Weaving in Ends

Every knitting project leaves them dangling around sooner or later: yarn ends.

Even in small projects using only one ball of yarn there are two of them: one from casting on, one from binding off. In projects using multiple skeins and sometimes – beware! – even knots we have to deal with, they soon hang around everywhere.

For years and years, when patterns told me to “weave in ends”, I just threaded my darning needle and picked up random bumps in random directions, while making sure to secure the open yarn end so it would not unravel.

Whenever I have to join a new ball of yarn in the middle of a project, I always knit a few stitches using both the old and new yarn ends, creating a few stitches worked with both strands together. As soon as I’m finished, I just have to cut the yarn ends – theoretically. Practically, I still weave in the ends just to make sure everything stays in place and nothing falls apart ever again.

Worked quite well for me so far.

What’s your method of weaving in? Let me know by leaving a comment below! – Julia

PS. Recently I learned that weaving in is an art for itself when I stumbled upon an article in Knitty magazine from 2004 about weaving in by using duplicate stitches. In case you’re not happy with your results when weaving in your ends, give it a try!