When I get to a corner, the fully opaque, or beginning end of the pink streak will need to be going in a direction 90 degrees, or perpendicular, away from the direction the tail, or fully transparent end of the streak, is going. But I can't figure out how to make it turn the corner. I know that for an animation, I need to create a series of 'snapshots', of the pink dot with its gradient 'tail' as it moves along the knot. The image is my avatar for this website, and I want to try animating it, so that it looks like a fill is in the process of being painted, like with a paint brush. Here's a screen shot of what I'm trying to do. But there must be some way to make this work. I know that one cannot make a gradient follow a path, at least not without some distortion. When drawing the path with the Bezier tool, select the option Shape: From Clipboard.Something tells me I should know how to do this, but I can't come up with it. If you have text outlines, one possibility is that you could ungroup them, and unify them as a single shape using Path > Union, copy it, and apply it as a pattern along a path. Just search for 'Inkscape text on a path' If you need more help, there are lots of tutorials available which show how to use the text on a path feature. If you then want to modify the letter forms, you could convert them to outlines using Path > Object to path. Simply select both the Text and the path, and click Text > Put on Path. However, if you have the font available, why not type it in Inkscape using the Text tool. Since you have done that, then you'd need to move them and rotate each individually into position, perhaps even skewing them a little, which could be quite troublesome. Text on a path in Inkscape is only available for text items made using the Text tool, not drawn or traced outlines.

Inkscape gradient bending