Admit it: You love the idea of knitting yourself a skirt to bounce around in this spring. Or the thought of giving out perfectly ethical, handmade scarves next Christmas. Or impressing strangers who approach you with a drive-by askliment.

The trouble is, there’s another side to all the street cred and eco-friendliness we love to love about DIY. Those glories are hard-earned — and harder for some of us, apparently, than others.

I would know.

“Hello. My name is Madison, and I’m craft-challenged.”

Last summer the Guardian published a series of articles on a knitting craze that has reportedly swept punky feminist circles in the United Kingdom. The paper interviewed knitters raved about this “alternative” craft renaissance. Crafty friends are knitting together in pubs? I was intrigued.

So fascinated was I by the prospect of having crochet parties and sporting DIY socks that I went straight to Amazon and ordered one of the recommended how-to books. I made a special trip across town to a lovely little knitting boutique, and about $35 later I had 7 pairs of needles and more balls of yarn than I will probably ever need.

My first taste of the DIY dark side came pretty much right away. Figuring out how to wind a center-pull ball of yarn to knit with took an embarrassingly long time. Playful mockery came from my boyfriend across the room. But I was ready to knit.

After two or three dedicated but unbearably tedious hours of trying to learn by reading, I can tell you something about self-taught knitting: Ditch the book.

I hadn’t expected to learn how to knit in one sitting anyway, so I pressed on. I found some video tutorials about “cast on” — success!

Getting the stitch down was another story. Knitting is hard. But after many more frustrating attempts, I finally knit something that vaguely resembled a row.

Eventually I knit several rows. But the excitement couldn’t compete with the long road ahead. How do I bind off? What about the purl stitch? What if I want my scarf to be two colors?

After a not-to-be-disclosed number of weeks of sitting on my desk — knits gradually slipping off the needle, pink yarn getting tangled up in pens and hair clips and such — I decided enough was enough.

That sad patch of crooked fuscia knits had become a monument to my DIY deficiency. It found itself in a new home: in a box in my closet. That was in November.

This week I finally dug it out to take a photo for this article. And I thought, maybe it’s time to give it another shot.

In end I have to admit there was some improvement between these short-lived attempts. I guess you can say I learned how to knit — sort of. Maybe there is some hope out there for us DIY-deficients after all.

Winding a ball, casting on, and knitting a few rows may not be of much use to me ever again. But I am pretty confident that my heightened sense of respect for the craftier folks out there made the experience worth doing.