I read about the 'magic ball' in Melissa Leapman's book stashbuster knits. Basically you join a lot of short lengths of yarn and then knit with them. Melissa describes two ways of joining the pieces. The first is to knot them:
Melissa says she trims the knots to about 1.5 cm and that in stocking stitch knitting, all the knots will come to the reverse side.
The other method is a Russian join.
You link two pieces of yarn and then thread each yarn back through itself:
The effort involved doesn't seem to me much different from normal threading in ends! The only advantage would be that it's done before knitting.
It does look like the same amount of work. I wonder if it's more pleasing to knit because you know the work is already done.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your conclusion - effort just has a time-phase shift.
ReplyDeleteI guess these methods would be okay if one didn't mind where each scrap colour went.
Yes, it would be much more random.
DeleteI tried a magic ball once, but didn't know about stocking stitch keeping the ends inside and it nearly drove me crazy. The Russian join method looks intriguing.
ReplyDeleteKaffe Fassett uses this Magic Ball technique for his beautiful works of art; but I think he actually uses a patterned yarn like Noro, so that the colour changes wouldn't be as stark.
ReplyDeleteHow did he join the pieces?
DeleteI looked up magic ball after you posted about it. The directions I read were for the Russian join, which looks like the perfect way to join the threads. I do have quite a few odds and ends, so I think I'll give this a try. Thanks for posting about the magic ball!
ReplyDelete