Tails

Did you know that your knitting had a tail? Yup, it does. This is it.
One end of your yarn is the "working yarn" and the other end is the "tail". The working yarn is the yarn you will use to knit with. More on working yarn tomorrow.

This tail is sly. It needs to be watched. If not closely supervised it can create all kinds of mischief. It can make stitches disappear. It can disguise itself as the working yarn.

The first problem can be avoided by ensuring that your tail is long enough not to pop through the last stitch. Leave a nice long tail. Unfortunately, this long tail can create the second problem. You see it is easy to mistake a long tail for the working yarn. Fortunately there is a solution for this problem as well. Put an anchor on your tail.

Lily Chin adds this type of anchor.

Don't have a bread tie. No worries, I always simply tie my tail in a figure 8.