Review of Cro Knit Yarn Tension Keeper

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to do a little review and a tutorial on how to use the Cro-Knit. And this is a tension keeper. So I just got it in the mail, have not even opened it yet. I can't wait to try this out. What it does As you can see a little piece of yarn in there. The yarn gets held by this piece that you wear on your finger and it's supposed to create tension so that you don't have to wrap the Wrap the yarn around So, I can't wait to try this and see how well it works. your fingers. I'm going to try it on all different thicknesses of yarn and see how it works out. So, I will let you know in just a bit. Okay, so I've been playing with the... Or the yarn tensioner for a little bit so I get used to how it works so I can explain it to you and let you know what I think about it. So when you take it out of the box you have a little ring here. There's a rubber band in here so don't lose the rubber band. That is for if where you're putting it on your finger if it's loose. So if you put it on your pinky, if you want to hold it on your pinky and it's moving around You would take the rubber band and Squeeze it together here so that it doesn't move on your finger. I've been using it on my middle finger, and I'll show you why once I get it loaded up with some yarn, so you can see how exactly it works. I've got a little swatch that I made up here without the tensioner, so you can see the difference when I start using it, how it changes my gauge. So the first thing that you do is you take your yarn, and the way that you're going to wear this, and this is the... You're wearing it to the inside of your hand, if you figure out different ways that you'd like to wear it, definitely go that way, but it recommends the inside of the hand, and then it kind of drapes over your finger, so it's almost like you're doing the wrap on the pinky in the normal way. The way that I hold my yarn, which is... Probably the worst way to hold it for my tension is I grab it so I can remember I grab it like this so I pinch it with my two fingers so my fingers are usually straight out and I'm pinching so what this does is it gives me great tension but it gives me great finger pain so especially with thin yarns or if I'm crocheting tightly for like amigurumi my fingers start hurting really bad. Quite quickly, so I was really excited to try this to see if it would help with the finger pain. So, and it did, so I'm gonna show that with you right now. It did help with thinner yarn. I'm going to show you how to put this in real quick and then I'll explain why I use it or why I wouldn't use it. So, you have to remember that it's going to the inside. This little flap here is going to come down to put the yarn in. So you want that facing towards your finger. And then you want the yarn to come Like as if you were winding it around your pinky and through here and all that. So the tail that's attached to the yarn is going to be facing down and the working yarn is facing up. So I'm not going to do it on my finger because it's a little difficult. Take it off. So you pull down this little guy here and it moves so it'll pop out of this little thing if you need it to. But you kind of work it in and you can loosen it. There's this nut here, so righty-tighty-lefty-loosey, so you can see I'm bringing it down. So I can bring it down even more to get it in. It is a little difficult to get it in. So one thing to remember is if you're doing color changing, you may not want to use this. Or you get a couple and put one for each color and just have them ready. And then you can just switch these off as you're working. Put a new one on your finger when you change color. But you don't have to do this every time you change color. So one thing I would do is either buy more or I would only use this for one color project. Let's turn this the wrong way, so now I'm going to tighten it up. Now this part's the difficult part, this takes a little time, so this is also why you don't want to be changing color with this, because you need to get it to the right tension for you. So you need to get it to where it feels comfortable, it moves enough, but not quite enough that that your tension is super loose, but it moves enough so that you can easily crochet so this takes a little bit of trial and error so what i do when once i have it on is i start crocheting so if i'm pulling it's already like pulling out without me really moving my fingers and i know it's too loose so i'm going to come back and tighten it a little bit more and pull it off i'm just going to do it as i go here just kind of pull it back and forth to see how it's feeling so this actually helped me out with my finger pain because now i'm not I'm not pinching my two... Fingers together to hold my yarn. I know I could learn other ways of holding my yarn, but that's what I've been doing for 20 years So it's kind of a habit by now, but this does help me remember to not do it I can actually crochet now without holding it. So one thing though that changes is my gauge Because now I'm kind of creating these bigger stitches I'm not keeping my loops quite the same size as my shaft. So my gauge is a little bit bigger and than it normally would be, so not too bad if I don't want finger pain, but if I have to meet a specific gauge, I really gotta do the gauge swatch with this on. I'm still getting used to it, you know, it's still, it's very different than, I have a lot more control when I pinch the yarn, when it's just free-flowing on my finger, I feel much more out of control. So, since I'm crocheting so much slower as well, so if I'm having finger pain, Or if I know I'm going to be working with thin yarn, so sport weight and below usually will give me some pain after a while, then I'm going to pull this guy out so once again a while the color changes. This isn't too expensive, it's like $7, but that's still kind of expensive to get a bunch of them to, you know, thread each color. So as you go through, I'm going to finish this whole row. So when you're done, or you need to get up, you just pull this off and set it with your work and then you can pick it up and start going again. So one thing also is where you place it. So you can put it on your pinky. This little part's always facing up. You can put it on your pinky if you're used to the pinky wrap as you're going. But one thing I found is that when I have a bigger... I'm like, where's my hook? Once I have a bigger project, this extra part is getting caught on here, so as you can see, it can come over here, and this is a little pokey thing, so it wants to get stuck on it. So when I have it on my pinky, it gets stuck more because my project is laying near my pinky. So I put it on the middle finger. The pinky actually works better, you know, for the tension, but I have to put it on my middle finger so that my project is far enough away that it's not getting caught on there. So that's another thing, if you're used to wrapping it around your pinky, this might seem a little strange having it appear on your middle finger. So if they put like a little casing or something where it wouldn't get caught, that'd be great. One thing also you need to remember is, if you are not used to tension, you gotta pull out your yarn from your ball more. Me, when I use my finger pinch, I can pull the yarn as I go and it doesn't ever mess up my tension, but when you have this kind of, um... Tension machine thing, or using your pinky, you gotta pull the ball out from the yarn for quite a bit, like for the whole row, so that you can keep working, because as you move your finger and pull, it needs slack. If you don't have the slack, it's going to not pull out as easily and mess up your tension. That's one other thing to remember. But overall, this is a really ingenious idea. It's a really good idea for people that may have finger pain like I do. It works really well once you get it set, but the only problem is that it takes a little while to get it set, so, you know, any short project, I would probably skip it, but for long projects with single colors. This can work really well for you, so if you have tried this, let me know. Tell me what you think of it, tell me any tips or tricks that you have found working with it. Maybe I'm putting the yarn in, you know, a really difficult way and you found a really fast and easy way to do it. But let us know below in the comments and thank you for watching.