Ends

Weaving in your ends can feel a bit daunting under the best of circumstances. And on a lot of the tiny things, you don’t have access to the back of your fabric once you’re done knitting, so it can feel extra tricky. But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds!

The first step is to minimize the number of ends you have to weave in on the front of the fabric. To do that, be sure to weave in your cast on end (and any other ends you can) before you close up your fabric. Keep an eye out in the pattern for a note reminding you when to weave in your first end. I’ll pretty much always remind you to handle your ends before you lose access to the inside of your object.

But that only takes care of the first end, you need to manage the final end as well. That’s where we’ll get a little sneaky.

First secure any live stitches. That usually means either running your tail through them, like at the top of a hat, or grafting them, like at the tip of a sock toe. Then, use your darning to bring your tail out through the legs of a stitch somewhere where you’ve got a nice little stretch of stockinette fabric.

Here you can see I’m using the needle to bring my tail from the center of the star (where I just secured my live stitches) down and out between the legs of a stitch near the edge of the star.

Then use your needle to duplicate stitch over a few plain stockinette stitches. Duplicate stitch just means using a needle and thread to trace the path of the yarn. Trace along three or four stitches.

Here you can see me starting to duplicate stitch over a couple of stitches.

After you’ve duplicate stitched over a few stitches, plunge your needle through your object out to somewhere on the other side. If you used a really slippery yarn or you’re giving your project to a kid or a pet or otherwise planning to put it into a high stress situation, you could duplicate stitch a few more stitches in a second location, but that’s not usually necessary.

Here you can see I’ve duplicate stitched over three stitches (the ones immediately to the right of the eye of my needle) and I’m sending my needle across the star to the far side.

Pull your tail all the way through and give it a little tug. You want it to be under a bit of tension. Carefully snip your tail very close to the fabric (be sure you don’t cut your knitting by mistake), and the tail will disappear inside your object.

Here I’m about to snip the tail.

Do it right, and your ends are very safely secured and more or less invisible. The only downside is that it can be really hard to find your end if you ever need to take your knitting apart later on. But I use this technique on pretty much every single tiny thing I knit, and it works beautifully!

The star pattern is Scintillation.