How to cut yarn or rejoin yarn

A common instruction giving in knitting patterns is to cut yarn (or sometimes “break yarn”), or to rejoin yarn. It’s one of those assumed knowledge types of things – it sounds simple enough, but I know newer knitters often still wonder ‘Am I doing this right?‘

How to cut or break yarn

This is where you literally are cutting the yarn so it’s detached from the ball/skein.

But here’s the important part – always leave a long tail. You never want to cut it short because then you won’t have enough of a tail to weave it into the fabric later. My go-to rule is that, unless a pattern specifies a certain length, I always leave at least an 8″ tail.

If you’d like to see this in action, I have fast-forwarded one of my video lessons to the point where I’m breaking/cutting my yarn after as instructed in a pattern – click here to view it.

Rejoin Yarn

In some instructions, you’re told to “rejoin yarn”. Often this occurs after the yarn had previously been cut.

Similar to the above, I have fast-forwarded one of my video lessons to the point where I’m showing to ‘rejoin yarn’ – click here to view it.

Note: in this video, the first stitch I’m working after rejoining yarn is a ‘kfb’ increase so that part you can disregard – just focus on how exactly I’m rejoining the yarn and initially working the first stitch.