The Hook and Needle Nook

  When working a large afghan, blanket, sweater or poncho in crochet, you often have to change to a new ball of yarn. By nature, it seems that I always have to use multiple balls of yarn for large crochet projects.  Anyone who knows my knitting and crochet style, knows that I don't love the finishing work. The worst of it, to me, is the weaving in ends. I have always looked for ways to minimize how many ends I have to weave in.  The felting method is my absolute favorite method when it comes to animal fibers and non-superwash wools. I have even been able to get this method to work with some of them. So, I thought I would share this method with you, in hopes it helps. This method will work with changing between one color and the next OR if you run out of one ball of yarn and are adding another ball of the same color. Felting Method: When you come to about 5 inches away from your next ball change, take the end of your yarn and pull the plies apart.  Make sure that all ...

 By Tiffany Landres If you are anything at all like me, you would rather start a new project than weave in the ends of your current project. And, even if you aren't as much of an end weaving hater as I am, there are just those projects that seem to have far too many ends to manage. You may think that there is nothing you can do to make those ends disappear. Well, the truth is, you don't have to be Houdini to manage this feat of magic. You just need a little advice. There are two ways that I use to get rid of my ends when I have to change colors frequently; the felting method and the Russian joining method. Videos of both methods can be found below! The felting method really requires you to have some kind of feltable animal fiber. You may be able to sneak by with a superwash wool or alpaca (if you are willing to spend a little more time on the felting process), but this is best done with a non-superwash wool than any other fiber material. When you get to a color change, calcula...