Going Loopy

In between spending too much time on Ravelry and attempting to get back to my PhD, I've been managing to squeeze in quite a bit of knitting time. I've finished two Christmas gifts, which I will show soon and started a third.

On top of this, I decided to see if I could understand this Magic Loop malarkey. One of the Christmas gifts I finished was a pair of socks and although I was sure I had faithfully recorded the numbers of rows and the amount of stitches used for turning the heel when knitting the first sock, the second definitely came out a wee bit smaller. This made me increasingly intrigued to work out how knitting two socks at the same time might happen.

First I looked at the Knitting Help video on small diameter knitting on one circular needle and came up with the little fingertip-sized piece below. I was so excited. Its so easy and now I see why my Knitpicks Options don't do really small cables because you actually (oddly) need a long one to do small circular knitting. (sorry for rubbish pics)

Then, I decided to move on to casting-on for two cuff-down socks on one circular needle. To do this I looked at the Boy Who Knits, as I had read on Ravelry that he has good tutorials. I don't think I quite got the cast-on right: although it worked it was extremely difficult to get the last half of the stitches on the needle. However, I do feel triumphant because I did it and here's the proof!

After this picture was taken I went on to knit about five rounds, just to make sure I had the technique down right, and I did! The only problems were making sure I didn't get ladders because although I was knitting tight stitches at the start of each round, when I pulled them onto the needle to work again they were being forced apart. Also, although this Rosewood circular is great for some projects, its join kept catching the yarn, again making it difficult to manoeuvre the stitches.

Now, although I am indeed showing off that I managed what in the past I imagined to be pure knitting witchcraft, I will definitely need to knit some trial (plain and maybe very little) socks this way before I believe the magic of the loop. I'm also not sure that I might prefer double pointed needles to this method. In a way its too early to tell, but something about it reminded me of driving an automatic compared to a manual, its fun and all that, but there's nothing like the feeling of control when you change gear.

We'll see...