I ♥ magic loop

I've discovered that not only is magic loop perfect bus and tube knitting, as promised, it also enables knitting at bus stops, knitting and walking when two buses fight for the same stop and your bus loses, and knitting whilst looking backwards over your shoulder, peering for your stop in the darkness after a few glasses of wine. I'm fairly sure that no amount of practice with dpns would allow me to do this.

I also really like noticing that my knitting has ears.


This was meant to be a gauge swatch, but I became somewhat addicted. And it was the perfect knitting to take to the park with five cousins under the age of four, beset on chasing small dogs and smearing their family with hummus and ice-cream. Thanks to the genius knitting technique, I managed to stay clean, mop up spills and chase toddlers without dropping a stitch (or, more pertinently, a needle).

You may notice that this yarn is blue. The day after my parcel from Ashley had arrived, with the colours I had carefully chosen (I wanted them all except for the Serengeti), I stopped by her blog to see that she'd chosen the blue, and appeared* to be knitting the sock I have been wanting to knit for most of my knitting life. Suddenly I found myself wishing really pathetically hard that I'd chosen Dusk after all.

And then, in one of those brilliant moments that confirms my love of all things knitblog-related, a little red ticket hopped onto my doormat, leading me to the sorting office and a parcel from Laura, containing none other than the blue yarn I'd been dreaming of for twenty-four hours. Heee! I was capable of doing nothing else for a little while than skipping around holding my yarn, and then dropping it straight onto the swift.


Thank you so much Laura. I love this yarn, not only for the lovely fabric it's knitting up into and the luscious softness of knitting with it, and not even for the fact that you sent it apropos of almost nothing, when your own life hasn't been easy recently (although I appreciate this too). I almost love it most because of the order of events that preceded its arrival, and particularly because the blue yarn came from you! If I had been asked to guess what colour plain yarn you would've picked, I'd have guessed blue (I can't think why), so it all seems to fit perfectly.


*I first read the post quickly, and assumed that Ashley was knitting the Danish socks from Knitting on the Road, which are actually the socks I've been wanting to knit for ages. Leafing through the book I found that the Conwy socks looked more likely in terms of gauge, and the novel idea of choosing my pattern to fit my gauge rather than the other way round and then trying to cook the pattern occurred to me. Lo and behold, it turns out that Ashley is many steps ahead of me as per, and is knitting the Conwy socks anyway.

Direct copying is flattering, honestly.