Fake it til you make it

This is a long, convoluted prelude to yet another scintillating “Pink Ribbon Product Review”. I don’t want to get ahead of myself though.

You’ve seen the Knifty Knitters at your local craft store right? They are usually round but they can also be rectangular. They could also be oval – but they aren’t.



That’s the one I bought. Why? Because I’ve always wanted to knit but was never able to follow the directions in a book well enough to actually produce anything more than a big tangle of knotted yarn.

But I thought that with this thing – I could fake knit until I sort of understood what was going on and then I could maybe move on to real knitting.

I know one of y’all is going to ask why I want to knit rather than crochet. I would like to say it’s because I don’t approve of the silent T.

Actually it is a sound thing – I love the little clickity clickity knitting needle noise. I also want to make sweaters; which seems to be more of a knitting thing than a crochet thing.

So I bought the loom and two balls of yarn. No – not balls; I bought two skeins of yarn. And did I buy the deep hunter green that looked so soft and luxurious? Did I buy the peacock teal that would match my couch? Did I buy the rust color my mom plans to paint her car? No, as you’ve probably guessed I bought pink yarn. It’s not even hot, neon, sexy, Pink Lady pink. It is soft , one might say ribbon colored, pink.

So I’ve got my yarn, I’ve got my fake knitting ring thing (technically it is called a loom – but I thought a loom was for weaving) and I am ready to rock and roll! The directions in the loom are for making a baby hat – but it said you could use the same technique and make a scarf – you just make it longer and then get on the internet to find out how to finish it. So I knitted. I knitted in the morning. I knitted in the evening.

I knitted in the morning. I knitted in the evening. All over this land.
I knitted out danger. I knitted out a warning.
I knitted out love between my brothers and my sisters.
All over this land

Okay – so I only knitted in the morning and the evening and every now and then in the afternoon. I knitted my little heart out. Until one day I was untwisting my project and discovered it was long enough to be a scarf! Yea!

So I go online and get to the Knifty Knitting site and look for the directions. Oh man! I finally find what seems to be the directions and I can not make sense out of them. I am not entirely surprised – I’ve been trying for four years now to learn the basic scout knots. Not pretty. I tried to learn the lanyard lacing enough to be able to teach the scouts. It is so completely beyond me why I have such difficulty with knots.

I found a website that has animated knot tying that you can slow down to ‘super stupid’ (which I am not) and I still manage to make big tangled messes. Or a knot that when tugged does not support weight but rather returns to being a piece of rope.

So I call my friend Charli. Charli is a knitting goddess. Wait til you see what she knitted for Team H.O.P.E. for our Christmas in July Tea. It will knock your socks off! (Obviously that is just a figure of speech – but if you did loose your socks Charli could knit you a new pair.)

So Charli agreed that the directions I read were too difficult to follow (She’s not only talented – she is kind as well) and she referred me to another website that had crystal clear directions. The directions were clear – my needing to go back and undo part of it was due to my own inattentiveness.

As I was trying to pull the yarn free without breaking it I was muttering rude things under my breath and began to have doubts. First of all, I’ve seen a lot of knitting (albeit from a distance) and I don’t remember other knitters using needle nosed pliers! I also don’t recall hearing them curse and swear.

(There is an outstanding folk group called The Knitters – and I heard a rumor that some of their members used to be in punk bands – so maybe those knitters swear on occasion?)

Anyway – I took a deep breath, worked the difficult part loose, and recommenced finishing my scarf. The last sentence said:

The last sequence will be UP through the 1st peg, then DOWN through the last. You will make the equivalent of little cursive E’s all around the loom. Now pop everything off your loom, and voila - stretchy bind-off.

So I come up through the first, down through the last – the loops look much more like cursive e’s than my cursive writing does. I am about to do my happy dance when it occurs to me – I have a tail of yarn that I don’t know what to do with. Plus the tail at the beginning of the project.

I assume I need to tie a knot but I don’t know what kind or exactly where to tie it. So I email Charli but so far no response. (I’m thinking maybe when you ask someone for help you shouldn’t start your email with “Okay Mrs. SmartyPants,”)

Yes, I’ve looked online and I can not find the answer. So assuming Charli gets back to me – (or one of you lovely people knows what to do and will take pity on me) I will finish this scarf and move on to the next thing – which will lead us to our next Pink Ribbon Product Review.

And if you want to buy this scarf it will be on sale at the Christmas in July Tea. Who knows – it may even come with a free loom if I don’t get an answer by then!