Blind Dog Yarns

Weaving in ends: a life philosophy

I was on the bus earlier this week and I was working on a crochet Christmas stocking. I always do some color work on my stockings and this one is a vintage red truck with some evergreens in the background for a family who has ordered stockings from me in the past.

As I was crocheting and moving the ends from my color work out of the way, I had a thought about how your approach to weaving in ends says a lot of your life philosophy. Weaving in ends is often a laborious and dreaded process for crocheters (and I imagine knitters). When I finish crocheting a project, I just want to use it or give it, not spend an hour tediously weaving in the little ends of yarn. But it must be done.

If you are a person who weaves in ends as you go (instead of waiting until the project is finished), I would say you are committed, confident, and proactive in your approach to life.

Weaving in ends as you go means that if you find a mistake later, it is much harder to frog (undo) and fix. If you’ve woven in your ends and then find a mistake 3 rows up, you have to try to find that end you cut and finagle it back out of the stitches in order to frog back enough to fix your mistake. Because of that I would say you are committed and confident. There’s no going back for you. You are at peace with your decisions.

And by not waiting until the end, when you finish the project you truly are done. You only have the last end to weave in when you finish and you can get right to enjoying your new project. For this reason, I consider the as-you-goer to be proactive. You know that awful feeling of 30+ ends staring you in the face and instead, you take steps to avoid having to do it all at once. You’re proactive and I would venture to guess you’re the same person who does just a couple chores a day so that your Sunday isn’t spent cleaning the house.

On the other hand, if you are a person who waits until the end to weave in your ends, I would consider you to be sensible, prepared, and dynamic.

By waiting until the end to weave in your ends, you leave your options open if you change your mind. You can always go back and make adjustments if something doesn’t look quite right because you’ve left the ability to frog your work quickly and easily. No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes. You’re ready for when that inevitably happens to you. Rather than weaving yourself into a corner you can’t get out of, you’re always prepared to go back, fix things and keep on moving.

Because you don’t have to pause to weave in your ends, you get to crochet quickly and relish in your progress. It's so exciting to see your project take shape. Even though when you finish you have to weave in all those ends, it’s worth it to get to your completed project faster and see the results of your handiwork.

For me personally (and I would guess most people), I fall somewhere in the middle. For large projects, like my temperature blanket I worked on for all of 2017, I wove in my ends as I went. The thought of weaving in all 756+ ends at once was gut wrenching.

But for my smaller projects, like my Christmas stockings, I definitely wait until the end to weave in my ends because I want to give myself the option to go back and fix any mistakes I find.

What about you? Are you an as-you-goer or an at-the-ender?