Not too good to spit (splice)

Over the past week I’ve been reorganizing my yarn stash. There were tons of skeins that I had forgotten I’d bought so I decided to roll them into tidy cakes for easier storage. Everything was going smoothly, but I hit a snag as I was caking (Can I make “cake” a verb?) some rather expensive sock yarn I’d bought last year.

I had settled into a good rhythm and was happily spinning along when I found the end of my yarn even though I was only halfway through the skein. Upon inspecting the skein closer, I found that 5 or 6 threads had been cut through in this one particular area! My guess is that someone nicked the skein with a razor while opening the shipping packaging. The threads were really well hidden so I never noticed!

So I learned my lesson: always dig around and check the skeins thoroughly before purchasing.

Now that I had identified my problem, I decided to try out a technique that I had heard about before: spit splicing! Even though my yarn was only 50% wool, I thought it’d be worth it to try it anyway. I was so concerned about saving my pretty sock yarn that I was willing to do whatever it took.

For those of you that aren’t familiar, spit splicing is exactly what it sounds like. You spit on your wool and, using heat and friction from your hands/pants, felt it back into one piece. I’ve seen some people online say that they don’t like the idea of getting saliva on their yarn, but in my opinion, you wash it after you finish your project so why does it matter?

Let’s just say that it worked wonders, and I was able to save my whole skein of sock yarn with minimal loss of material! I tried the spit splice, now I’m a believer!