Magic Loop Magic Loop

Ha! I figured it out all on my own!


I know many of you have been using the magic loop method for a long time. But I never actually knew how to do it; only thing I knew was that it involved a wicked long circular needle. Other than that, I was pretty clueless. Last night I was working on my sweater (details to come soon!) and I finished the body and got to the sleeves. This cardi is knit in the round so I just had to pick up the sleeve stitches left on the holders. Well little did I know that I did NOT have dpns in a size 5 (blasphemy I know!). Unfortunately it was about 10:30pm and thus no knitting store was open. Because I was knitting this cardi on my interchangeable Denise needles there was only one option... figure out that weird magic loop method.


After a few mishaps and a few stretched out stitches I finally used my head and realized the geometry of what is actually going on. You have a knitted circle that has a circumference smaller than the circumference of the length of the circular needles. Thus, you have to have the longer lengths of the needle cord on either side of the knitting in order to have your knitting retain the shape. Okay writting that out made NO sense. But it did make sense in my head last night!


As I'm writing this post I googled "magic loop method" and I have found a number of videos and posts that describe how to do this elegant method of knitting. Check it out. Other people have taken more time to describe and show how this method is done... much better than what I have done here!


Learning this new method is kinda cool -- I know, that's the dork in me, I love to learn new things! I might -MIGHT- now have the courage to try out magic loop on my next pair of socks. Not sure, I really love knitting socks on my dpns. But I guess I could try it out... it's not going to hurt to try!

hmmm... maybe someday I'll even try knitting 2 socks at 1 time.... oh boy! :)

Comments

lunaticraft said…
Congrats! I'm still too scared of circs to really take the plunge. I've got to get a set of interchangables first anyway, I think. More cost effective, it seems.
Megan said…
Magic loop is so addictive. And not dorky at all I was so excited when I figured it out. I used the tutorial on knitpicks.com believe it or not.