How to Make a Spit Splice

In this video, I'm gonna show you why you might wanna be spitting on your yarn. So if you've ever been crocheting along and you have to add a new ball of yarn and you get a little grumpy because you know you're gonna have to weave in those ends later, I have a trick for you. This is called the spit splice. So this is a method of joining one section of yarn to another, and it only works with a feltable yarn. So that would be an animal fiber that has not been treated to be a super wash. So if you look at your label and it says washable wool or super wash wool, that's not gonna work for this method because we need to be felting the pieces together. All right, so let me show you how to do it. So here I have a ball of yarn, and you can see all these different colors. Those were joined together using this method. You can see there's a little gradation between the colors. And obviously you can be doing this just, you know, with one color to the same color. I'm just showing you with two different colors so you can actually see where the fibers are kind of mixing together. All right, so you're gonna wanna break your yarn instead of cutting your yarn. So after you run out of yarn, if you have a nice solid end like this, you're going to wanna break it. So you might need to untwist it just a little bit to make it a little weaker. Most thinner yarns should break fairly easily. So when you break it, it gets a little bit pointed looking and it's a little wispy. That's gonna make your join a little bit less obvious. So the first thing you're gonna do is, after you break your yarn, you're gonna just sort of spread out your yarn. And you can see I'm using a one ply here, which means there aren't a couple of different yarns spun together. It's just one piece that's twisted once or twisted around. But this does work with, you know, more than one ply. I just wanted to point that out. It's just a little bit easier to do with one ply because you can spread out your wool really easily like this. So you're gonna spread it out, kind of making a fuzzy little pancake. And then you're gonna do the same thing with the ball of yarn that you're joining. So I've already kind of started that. You would break it if it has a nice cut in it and then spread it out like this. And here's where the spit part comes in. So you're gonna lay one piece on top of the other like this. And I like to kind of mix them together a little bit, if you can, like that, sort of overlapping them so that they aren't just one on top of the other. And then you're going to... You can either spit on your yarn, which is where the name comes from, or you can use water to help you felt it. And I have actually heard that your spit, the enzymes in your spit actually help the felting process. So I think that's why a lot of people do it. Plus, it's just easier than going to get bowl of water, but I'm gonna be just using regular water here, just regular tap water. So you're gonna get this section a little bit wet. You don't want it dripping wet, just a little tiny bit, a couple droplets of water. Or you can even just get your hand glistening just a little bit there too if you don't wanna put it directly on the yarn. And then you're gonna roll this between your palms to felt it together. So you just start rolling it back and forth. And if you have... I think I put a little too much water on there. It'll take a little bit of extra time to kind of dry out. But it starts to get a little sticky. You can feel it with your hands. You've got a little extra friction. If you rub a little, you know, if you smush your hands a little tighter, now I can feel that it's getting a little stickier and it's gonna start to felt. And if you're having trouble, I find that if you go in just a little bit of a circle like this. Here, let me show you from the top view, going around in a circle, that can kind of... I feel like it makes the scales of the wool stick into each other a little more. And then you can go back and forth again like this. But basically you just wanna felt it until it is, you can see here it's pretty strong. You're gonna wanna test it a little before you knit with it or before you crochet with it, rather, sorry. Or you can knit, if you're a knitter. But there you have it. Okay, so I'm gonna show you a second way to do this. So, again, you're gonna wanna start out with wispy yarn. So you need to break it. And you can kind of fluff it up a little bit. And if you want to, and actually in the last method, you can also do this. If you find that your join is too bulky, many people will take their scissors, and they'll trim off just a little bit of the yarn. So that way when you're felting them together you end up with a smaller amount. But since I felt mine very vigorously, it really ends up being a little bit more dense, but about the same thickness of the yarn. So I almost never trim away little pieces like that. But I think, you know, most people if they're not felting it that much, they'll find it a little bit easier for it to blend in if you cut off just a little bit of your yarn. So here's the second way to do it. You can lay one piece on top of the other and then you're gonna connect the old ball, the tip of the old ball to the strand that comes from the ball and the same thing with this. You're just folding it over onto itself like that. So you're making this sort of link here and then you can do the same thing. You can just get it a little bit wet. I'm gonna make it just a little shorter so we don't need quite that much overlapping. And then you felt it to itself. And the same thing, you know, you just need it to be a little bit damp and when it gets a little bit more dry, you can start to feel it sticking. Especially if you have a little bit of heat from your hands rubbing together, you can feel that point where the wool starts to get sticky and it starts gripping to itself. So this kind of join, if you had one color and you wanted it to abruptly become the other, this would be a good method for that. Or if you're going from one color and staying with the same color, if you're just joining a new ball of yarn like you just ran out on your project, then this would be a good option for that too. It does make this area very strong because it is folded around instead of just overlapping bits that are felted together. But really, either way, these joins are pretty strong especially once you crochet them up 'cause that helps hold everything in place. So you can see, very strong join. And that is the spit splice.