New and Improved

 I've come up with a new and improved(!) way of knitting in my ends.  I'm a little embarrassed it took me years to get here, but at least I got here in the end. 

I was thinking about how I knit in the tail of the new yarn, and how fiddly it is and how I have to remember to start knitting it in before I get to it (I never do and I have to tink back to do it) and thinking about a better way.  And lo!  I finally got it.  I start knitting the new end in before I get to the end of the old end.  Duh.

When I'm changing colors for a stripe, that happens at a very predictable place, the end of the round (I'm knitting in the round).  I've found that 8 stitches are are the perfect amount to leave for knitting in the end.  This catches the new yarn 4 times (it takes 2 stitches for a "catch"), which is enough to be stable.

Here are my 8 stitches waiting for the knitting in of my new color.

   

I then lay the new color over the right hand needle.

Then I knit the stitch.  Two stitches "catch" the yarn.

I continue through my 8 stitches, catching down my end as I go. 

Here I've knit my 8 stitches and I'm ready to knit the first stitch with my new color.  But wait!  See my long end there on the right?  I want to pull that in.  So I just...pull.  I pull on the new yarn until I have a tiny end (no need to trim).  It will slide, you might have to go a little slow until you get the hang of it.  Added bonus, it tightens things up a bit.  You want to do it before you knit the first stitch with your new color.  Once you knit that stitch it becomes more difficult to pull the strand.  Not impossible, but more difficult.

Here is my end after I've pulled it closer.  Much better.  I then pick up my new color (what joy, it's just there ready for me!) and knit in my old end as I always do.  

But what if you're adding in a new yarn not at the end of a round/row?  What if your little yarn bit for your Frankenstein Sock has run out before your stripe has the right number of rows?  How to tell when to start working in your new end?  No worries.  You need ~4" of yarn left to knit in the new yarn and then catch down after you switch.  I measured, and on my hand it's from that bottom joint on the back of my hand of my pointer finger to just past my fingertip, more or less.  (Does anyone else measure things against your body parts?  I'm not likely to misplace my finger so it's a good reference.)  I show it here flat, but in reality I just hold it up next to my finger while I'm knitting.  It's really hard to take a picture while you're holding a camera with one hand and measuring against the other.  One might even say impossible. 

Anyway, maybe one of you will try this improved method and find it helpful.  (But if you came up with it before me I don't want to hear it.)