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This video is a suggestion from Tracy in Oregon, well, not so much a suggestion, but she asked
me the question.
What do i do when i'm knitting along, and i find that there's a knot in my yarn where
it doesn't belong?
well, first thing you do is you throw a fit.
because there is no reason to ever have a knot in the middle of your yarn, and to discover
it when you're working.
especially if you're paying for luxury yarn, you don't want to see a knot like that!
but it happens.
and chances are you can't just knit past it.
you need to address the problem, because it will show in your work.
or, even if you're knitting along, and you feel like you got the ends poking out to the
back of your work, the first time you wear that sweater, the ends are probably going
to poke out the front.
you do have to deal with it.
now, the good news is is if you're using 100% wool or another animal fiber, you can just
spit splice.
and i'll give you a link here to my spit splicing video.
that's a way of actually grafting, you know, cutting the knot out, and grafting the two
ends of yarn together, seamlessly.
so you can keep knitting without having to do anything else.
but really, for any other time, or if you're worried about the carefully plied yarn showing
the spit splice in the work, you need to tink back.
take out every stitch going back to a convenient place in the work, and actually attach, cut
out the knot, and attach the yarn again like a new ball of yarn.
now, if you're working on a scarf or something, that's simple enough, you just go back to
the beginning of the row and add the new ball of yarn.
if you're working on something more complicated, like uh, let's say a raglan sweater that's
knit in-the-round from the top down.
the best thing to do is to tink back to a place that is going to be less conspicuous.
which is probably going to be at the increases.
the place you want to avoid is a sea of stockinette.
you don't want to change to a new ball of yarn in a place in the sweater where you want
it to be the smoothest.
and the nicest looking fabric.
so you need to find a place in the fabric where something else is going on.
and for a top down sweater, that would be at any one of the increases in the front or
back of the sweater.
so the first thing to do is to determine how far you have to go back to a place where you
can attach a new ball of yarn.
and then cut out the knot, and keep going from there.
let's go ahead and take a look at the sample that i've put together.
i have this little bit of flat knitting here, and this is a pretty easy example.
i've put a really terrible knot right here in the work, and i've let myself knit up,
until my knot is almost there in my work.
and because this is a flat piece, i know exactly where i have to go.
i have to tink, which is the word knit backwards.
i'm going to unknit these stitches to get back to the beginning of the row, cut out
the knot, and attach the yarn like a new ball of yarn.
so, if you've never seen tinking before, all i'm going to do is take the tip of my left
needle, and put it into the stitch below.
slide that over, and pull the working yarn to pop out that stitch.
in there, slide it over, pull it out.
and then when i come to a purl stitch, actually that was not a purl stitch - i'm going to
take it down one more!
you want to, pull the yarn - whoops - i've already done that one.
okay, let me tink out back to here, then i want to show you.
how to tink out a purl stitch, because that row didn't have any purl stitches.
okay, to tink out a purl stitch, i'm going to keep my working yarn in front.
put my needle, put my needle into the stitch below, slide it off, and pull the working
yarn.
working yarn's in front, into the stitch below.
and then i go back to knit stitches, pull the yarn back between the two needles.
into the stitch below.
into the stitch below.
you see? this is a way of working backwards through stitches, without ever leaving live
stitches hanging there so they can unravel.
but i just took out more than i needed to, so i will knit back up to where i am here.
okay.
so here's my knot.
first things first, get rid of that knot!
that's gone.
now, i have this end hanging here, and i have this yarn that i want to attach like a new
ball.
to do that, i can either spit splice, or i can do this.
i'm going to put my needle in, like i'm ready to start knitting a stitch.
take my new ball of yarn, and fold it over, leaving about a six inch tail.
wrap the needle with that, and pull the stitch through.
now the new yarn is essentially attached here.
i'm going to knit one more stitch, and drop the tail end, and just knit a stitch there.
then, what i do, is i take the two ends, the two short ends.
and i tie them in a very tidy, tight knot.
then i can go back and weave in those ends when i'm finished with my project.
but from here, i just keep working.
and you can keep going, knowing that your work is going to look nice, without the ends
of a knot poking through.
again, many thanks to Tracy for giving me this idea for a video, and good luck.
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