The short end

We're always counselled to leave nice long ends for weaving in safely (15cm is a good guideline most of the time). But sometimes we can't (or don't). The yarn breaks, we just squeak it to the end of the cast off - there's lots of reasons for ending up shorter than ideal. Here's a cunning little trick for dealing with just that situation. You can weave in like this even if your end is shorter than your yarn needle. The cunning part? Don't thread the needle. Weave it through the fabric as normal, unthreaded. When you've got as far along as the length of your yarn tail, stop. Now thread the needle with the little bitty end of yarn. Finally, just pull the needle so that the yarn tail follows it through the fabric, getting woven in as it goes. Ta da! Then you can clip it close to the fabric, though you'll remember from our post on blocking lace that we prefer to leave the clipping until after the piece has been blocked. That lovely piece of knitting in the picture is a shawl that Jacqui's knitting from Skein Queen Delectable. In fact, it's the second shawl she's knitting from the one skein, because 700 metres of yarn gives you quite a lot of knitting. More details of both pieces of lace in the fullness of time, of course, but for now, we can be confident that the ends are safe and snug.