How to sew in yarn-ends and "wintering"

This post is about sewing in yarn-ends in knitting, but because I rant about a lot of other things beforehand, you will only notice this at the last paragraphs :-D

Last week I wrote about my Fibre mood Leona addiction. I told you that I already made two of these comfy sweaters and that I am working on a fantastic hack, a cardigan version of this batwing sweater. And dear readers, I did it. I transformed the Leona sweater successfully into a cardigan. And do you know what’s happening here today…….. ? I won’t write about it 🤣



This morning it started to snow, and I am in such a cuddly mood. I somewhere read is called „wintering“ if you want to stay inside with a lot of hot tea, have the drive to bake buckets full of cookies and knit while simultaneously reading at least the first ten books of your favorites list on Goodreads. And as I am the unchallenged dictator queen author of my blog you will get knitting content instead of a hack how to transform the Leona sweater (or any other sweater) into a cardigan. Hopefully I will be in the mood to write about it next week. Hopefully for you, if you want to transform the Leona sweater into a cardigan :-DDDD



Back to my weekend. We already were warned that it will get colder, and snow will arrive, so part of our free time was spent in the garden to plant the bulbs for spring flowers like tulips, narcissus, flower onions and hyacinths, before the soil starts to freeze. We timed this perfectly, as today the first snow is falling. Rest of the weekend was me painting and baking and – tada - finally tackling my box of shame. Before I am allowed to knit something else - I tell myself - I must work on the box or the view of my studio window will get completely blocked by unfished projects :-D



My project of choice is the cropped pink cardigan I already mentioned in older posts. This is a pattern I created out of mix of style preferences I have, hoping I will get a bit more wear out of it. You remember I am strange regarding my hand knit cardigans: I mostly choose yarn which satisfy my wish for bright colorful yarn without making me go bankrupt and so I often end with – ahem – strange concoction regarding pattern, style and color (read: my hand knit garments don’t fit my style or rtw clothes).

This new pattern I created has a cropped wide style with a buttonless front. I added a kind of ruffle/ribbing/flap (how is this called???) at the shoulder seam which I really like style wise. Because the pattern is knitted from the button up it has a lot of dreaded yarn ends which I need to sew in. Sigh.

I have read a lot about sewing in yarn ends, but still my style of doing it follows the motto „better safe than sorry“ and less „appearance is everything“. When my yarn is sewn in it needs a master thief or escapologist to reopen the knots. But sadly, this extra security comes with a price: the inside of my knitted garments do not look good. I will describe my method and hope you come up with several faster, prettier all in all better method in the comments.



My technique for securing yarn ends
I leave a yarn tail of appr. 40 cm every time I need to break the thread. For sewing in I use a big darning needle with a plastic loop instead of a classic needle eye which makes it easy to get even the thickest yarn threaded (see title photo). I then sew diagonally through the bums of the knit stitches on the inside of the garments. The yarn should cross itself in this process. When I am finished I make one knot. Know I start with another yarn end in the near of the last knot and repeat the process, only this time I try to end with the sewing near the last knot I made. When I am finished with the second yarn-end I make three (I told you my yarn is safe, really safe :-D) knots with these two yarn-ends. Then I cut the rest of these yarn-ends away. You can see these knots on the photo.

In this way I proceed, and you perhaps have an idea why I need so much time to sew in the yarn-ends. I am sure there are better (less neurotic) ways to get this done. I remember that @crosheille had a trick with hot glue, but I am no longer sure how it worked and if it worked on garments which need to be washed.
I am super curious how you tackle this task. I am even more curious how you do this on all your tiny Barbie garments or on amigurumi? Let’s talk yarn-ends... 💟

Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday and the community builder team @lauramica, @romeskie and @kattycrochet I am so glad to be part of. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric, and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community.

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