Finger knitting: A way to make it useful

When I was in high school, there was a brief but intense fad among many of the students for finger knitting. We bought big skeins of Red Heart multicolored yarn and carried them with us everywhere, finger knitting away. We ended up with these huge ropes of yarn, and then what? This lack of a use for the final product is what finally killed the trend.

It's too bad I didn't know then what I know now, because over the weekend I was able to use a finger knit rope to make a really great scarf, in only 20 minutes!

Technically I used Red Heart Boutique Dash. This sloppy skein of weird, ultra-thick novelty yarn leaped out at me from the sale bin at Joann's. A single 30-yard skein proved to be enough to make a decent sized infinity cowl.

If you don't have access to Red Heart Boutique Dash, or you want to use a custom color or fiber (Boutique Dash is acrylic, and you might want to use wool), you can just finger knit yourself up the equivalent of a skein with very little trouble.

Here is a video on how to finger knit. It is essentially a variation of spool knitting. You lay the yarn across the fingers of your left hand, and pull the loops over the strand. It basically creates a very large gauge i-cord.

To "knit" your rope (whether finger-knit or Boutique Dash) into a proper scarf, use your thumbs as knitting needles.

I cast on 4 stitches onto my left thumb (which was as many as could fit), and used my right thumb as the working needle. I used my fingers to manipulate the working yarn. At the end of each row, I slipped the stitches off my right thumb, turned them around, and slipped them back onto my left thumb. This created a large garter stitch scarf, in less than the amount of time it took to watch an episode of Bob's Burgers.

Finger knitting: suddenly, I'm a fan again!

Image courtesy Flickr/decor8girl