I love starting new projects—poring over new ideas, selecting the yarn, deciding which needle will work best with the fiber, and winding the yarn into balls. I love casting on three stitches and watching it grow to 300. I love creating the textile. But all that love comes to a screeching halt once the last stitch is bound off.

My least favorite part about knitting is having to weave in the ends when the project is finished. Ugh. I have literally set aside finished projects for more than a year to avoid weaving in multiple ends. It’s not so bad when it’s a simple one-color project and I’m able to spit-splice wool ends, leaving me with only a couple of ends to weave in. But it’s those beautiful colorwork and gradient projects that give me end-weaving anxiety.

I recently finished Melanie Berg’s True Colors and I’m in love with the colors and how the gradient is working, but it’s been done for over a week now and I think I’ve woven in seven ends (and I probably have 50+ more ends to go). I’ve set it aside and already started working on a new project, in addition to an MKAL I’m doing. I won’t lie, I’m in end-weaving denial. I’m secretly hoping magical end-weaving elves come to my house one snowy night and surprise me in the morning with a completed shawl. That’s not too much to ask, right?

For the True Colors project, I did learn a new (to me) technique for carrying the yarn up the side. This technique locks in the yarn behind the first stitch on the right-side rows and completely hides it from the front. After doing this for a few inches, I felt like “where has this been all my knitting life?!”

Want to learn? Lee Meredith at leethalknits.com created a written tutorial for continental and English knitters to carry the yarn up the side and lock it in. The tutorial is just images and text, so if you’re a video learner, it might take a bit to grasp the instruction (or maybe that was just me). Once I got the hang of it, it was super easy to do and produced a great result. I’ve definitely added this technique to my bag of tricks for future projects.

You might be saying to yourself “OMG, weaving in ends is the easiest part of the project!” And you would be correct. However, for me, it’s also the most tedious. Also, I’m a bit of a rule breaker when it comes to weaving in the ends because … wait for it … I put knots in my knitting.

I’ve watched videos, read books and attended in-person and virtual classes on finishing projects. Every single time, it gets drilled into our heads to avoid putting knots in the knitting. I can’t help it if a knot makes me feel more secure. I weave it up and down a few times, I create as flat a knot as I can, I clip the yarn, split the ply and rough it up a bit. I’ve tried not doing the knot, but when I stretch the yarn during blocking, the end pops out and is a total pain to weave in again. Sometimes a knitter’s got to knot.

I’ve set an end-weaving goal for myself. I WILL have True Colors completely finished (ends woven and blocked) by March 9, which is when Vogue Knitting Live comes back to Chicago. I only wish Melanie Berg was coming to Chicago’s event like she did recently for New York’s event. I’m pretty sure I would have totally geeked out in front of her with my True Colors shawl. I did that with Vickie Howell and Debbie Stoller at an event. But that’s an embarrassing story for another day.

Epilogue
I wasn’t kidding when I said it took me more than a year to weave in ends for previous projects. It’s my mental block. I can’t help it. I finished knitting On the Spice Market on November 23, 2016 and finally wove in the ends on September 9, 2017. I finished knitting Metamorphosis Shawl on December 19, 2013 and finally wove in the ends on September 11, 2017 (yeah, almost four years later). I finished knitting Sugarloaf on February 25, 2016 and wove in the ends on September 14, 2017. Clearly something productive was happening last September!