Joining Yarn in Nalbinding
So I'm learning some things for nalbinding, and one question that came up was "how do I join two not felting pieces of yarn?"
So I did some research, and found this lovely succinct site.
With nalbinding you are not able to work off a ball/skein/hank of yarn because you are pulling the entire length you have your needle attached to through. This means you need an end, and this means you need to join. A lot.
Normally I’d just do a wet splice (with a stagger splice to make it stronger and more seamless) because I’m doing more historically accurate things using pure wool. Pure wool splices the best, any animal fiber works as far as I can tell but I have yet to use this in practice.
But if you’re looking to use cheaper yarn, don’t like the feel of wool/are allergic or why ever you’re using something that doesn’t felt, have some joins I think work best.
The top and bottom are Russian joins, these use a needle like the one pictured. If you’re unfamiliar with how a Russian join works, click the hyperlink. You do end up with a thicker point at the join.
The middle is a braided join and it is exactly as it sounds like. I’d suggest using a braided if you’re looking for something that is the same thickness of your original yarn. Unless you’re really good at a 2 strand rope braid this will not work with some types of yarn as you need to separate your plies (those individual strands twirled together to create the yarn) for a regular braid.
