Sunday 10 September 2006

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.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear your news. Hope you're finding some solace with the magic loop and beautiful yarn. Incidentally, what needles are you using?

Ashley said...

Magic loop is brilliant, right And isn't the Dusk so pretty? Just a little on the green side of navy. What do you think of the yarn aside from the color? (or am I just assuming the blue yarn is Gloss as well, when it is actually another type of yarn entirely?) Oh, and yes, I added stitches to the Conwys, but Denmark (with different yarn) are right up on my list too.

Ashley said...

To clarify, I added stitches to the Conwys because they are going to be a birthday gift for my dad. They should work perfectly with the Gloss as written for, um, the more feminine foot.

Anonymous said...

Yay magic loop! I always wanted to love it, but I'm more of a dpn girl at heart. I'll give it another try, one of these days. Love the bluey blue.

Marie said...

Dusk is so pretty! That's the Gloss colorway that caught my eye the most. I love the bunny ears on the knitting too. Does magic loop make joining in the round much easier? Trying to tighten that initial join stitch has always been a dark spot in circular knitting for me.

Alice said...

there is an extra l at the end of that link to me

It took me ages to work out what was wrong with the link (I'm a determinded sorter of broken links, as most times you can work them out) then I looked at it properly and reasised it was my blog! zip-ee!

I forgot all about magic loop looking like mickey mouse. when I first realised that back when I learnt I got very excited and insisted on knitting while wearing a mickey mouse hat. I'd completely forgotten!

Anonymous said...

I must learn this technique...it sounds awesome. I have to admit, I like working with DPN's, it makes me feel smart or something, heh. =)

Anonymous said...

impressive bus-knitting skills. isn't it wonderful when everything falls in perfectly--yarn, needles, technique--and you just can't stop knitting?

i know comments are disabled for the post below... still, wanted to say sorry about the news. i'm glad it was the right thing... but such situations are hard, so take care.

Anonymous said...

P.S. I've been meaning to ask: is that Cascade Sierra yarn?