Using A Yarn Guide As A Tension Guide Review

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to do a review on this Clover Yarn Guide. It was actually a viewer that left me a comment about how she uses it to keep tension in her yarn when her hands are sore. And I thought that was a really interesting way to use it. I always thought, because of the picture that's on it, was that you used it to kind of guide... Colored strands when you're doing colored or double-stranded knitting. So I didn't know that you could use it for tension So I'm gonna give it a try and see how it works because if you've watched any of my Pattern videos, you know that I don't do the finger wrapping tension I just kind of hold on to it with one finger and that gets really tiring and really sore on my hands after a while So I'm excited to see if this works So I'm going to take it out of the package and give it a try with one of my projects and I'll let you know how it's working and I'll show you also how to thread it and work it if it does work. Okay, so I've got my yarn guide out of the package and there are the cute little instructions that kind of just tell you what to do, which is flip it open, you know, stick it on your finger and then run your yarn through, actually I have this on backwards, run your yarn through and then close it up. Now, I wanted to use this as a tension guide because I have horrible, let me show you how I actually crochet, I have a horrible way of holding my yarn. It gets very tiring. So when I crochet, here, I hold my yarn with these two fingers. I don't hold them with any of my pinky or ring finger, I hold them all with these two fingers up here. And I just kind of let it go as I'm working to get my tension. Now the reason that this is horrible is normal crochet is fine, it doesn't really bother me, but if I'm doing something with a tight crochet where I need my stitches really tight, my fingers are holding my tension tight. And you can see that it's not really a natural position, so I get real pain right along here as I'm going. So it really starts to bother me after I crochet for a little while. So I was hoping that this tension guide would help me out. So technically, it's a yarn guide for knitting where it will keep your colors separated. But, a viewer had said, hey, try it for tension guide. So what I first did was I just stuck the yarn in, and I tried to, you know, you just kind of hold your finger out, and try to crochet that way. But you can see that the yarn is not, I have no tension. So that wasn't working. Then, I heard somebody said, stick it on your pinky, and use it as your pinky guide that you would use normally, Hopefully, like you're kind of... claw here where you would hold your tension. But that's kind of the same thing as just running it through your pinky. And I'm not used to that so it wasn't very comfortable either. Then I got the bright idea. To wrap it, because what I do when I'm working tight stitches, when I start getting pain, I wrap my yarn three times around my finger, and I'm able to hold it straight out and kind of get a good enough tension, and it keeps it tight enough that my tight stitches don't bother me as much. So I was like, well, let me try that with this. Maybe it'll help keep, you know, my circulation from getting cut off, because I'll wrap it It's so tight that, I keep putting this on backwards, that By the end, my finger is like purple from all of the tension, so I decided to wrap it three times and try it that way, and I found out that it works pretty well. It kind of, the yarn doesn't grip me now, but the little plastic thing does, so I don't know which is the worse of two evils, either the yarn cutting my circulation off or the actual plastic piece, but I find that this is, it kind of, it's not as annoying as wrapping the yarn three times and getting the circulation cut off, and it helps pretty well with the tension. So it is possible to use this as a tension guide. Now you're probably thinking, well what about other size of yarn, because this is worsted weight, which most people work with, but some people work with lighter yarn or heavier yarn. I was actually working on a very bulky, this is super bulky yarn, this is number 6, this is Hometown USA, you can see I've been using it while my skein is so falling apart, but it's a super bulky. I can't wrap this one three times, it will go around, but my yarn won't move, like I can't get it to pull through for the life of me, so I did a double wrap. So I put one on one side and one on the other side, and I found out that works just fine. So I can double wrap, and with the project that I'm using this for, this actually helps me a lot because I am doing a project where I need these super bulky stitches to be really tight, so this is actually helping me quite a bit. It kind of helps keep the tension just perfect to get those tight stitches, and using just I'm going to test my fingers. It really gets painful, and I have to do the three on this because I can't get a good enough tension the way that I normally hold it. It just wants to slide right out, so that actually came really in handy. Then we have light weight yarn. This is fingering yarn. This is Knit Picks Palette, one of my favorite yarns. I use this for all of my Fair Isle beanies. But the same thing, this is a very light yarn so it easily Wraps around three times and you'll see that I wrap it from front or from back to front just like I would do like a yarn over. That's how I do it. And then I just start working. And it's the three wraps helps here too. So I like this yarn guide. I have another one coming in the mail that the same viewer that told me about using this as a tension guide recommended, so I'm going to do one on that also, and it actually has like a little twisty nut that will actually create the tension. It's made for tension. It's not made for keeping your yarn untangled when you're doing like double-stranded knitting, so I'm really excited to get that one. It's shipping already, so soon I'll have it. But, in the meantime, this does work if you don't like, um, I'm not sure if you could really, you might be able to put something to kind of pad the blue plastic, because it grips pretty tightly, so that can become uncomfortable after a while, but overall, if I'm doing tight tight stitches. I will use this. If I'm doing just regular crochet, I probably won't because the blue plastic part is just a little bit too uncomfortable. But for knitting it for tight stitches like amigurumi or anything where your stitches need to be really tight, this helps a lot. And it's only like $3 or $4. I got this one on Amazon, but you can get them, because I don't have any local stores where I live right now, but you can get this at most craft stores. So just check the knitting and crochet section and you'll find it. But that's my review and my helpful tips for using this guy. And if you have any questions or you use this and use it in a different way, let us know. But thanks for watching.