Magically Delicious!

One more pair down, just 2 more to go. These are for my dad, the yarn is Louet Gems Fingering Weight in Charcoal. I'm pretty happy with them, I'm beginning to think Louet yarns are perfect. Really, I can't picture being unhappy with them ever. Even though I have to admit earlier this week the sock knitting was beginning to get well, nothing short of tedious. I have 7 people who want pairs of socks for Christmas this year. Do the math and that is 14 socks altogether. Yeesh. I know I started a while ago, but with 2 pairs still to go, I'm not exactly at the end of the tunnel. Thankfully this week I was snatched back from the fiery gates of sock knitting hell (oh how I hate to see the words knitting and hell so close to each other in a sentence!) because Tracy helped me learn to Magic Loop!



This is really fun for me because if I had my choice right now I'd love to be knitting a sweater. The weather has finally turned colder here and it seems everywhere I look there are these amazing sweaters being knit or that I want to knit. Chris in my knitting group is knitting the Radiance Cabled Jacket from Webs and it is gorgeous! And I keep feeling the pretty, thick tweedy yarn in my stash wishing I was clicking away on a warm, hefty sweater rather than all these silly little socks on their silly little dinky bamboo dpns. Magic Loop feeds my delusion of sweater knitting just a tad since it's on circulars, I know it's a delusion but it might be enough to finally get through these Christmas socks. (We saw Lars and The Real Girl last night. I have the feeling delusion is going to be my new word for awhile...)

And in reality of course there are a lot of other cool pluses about Magic Loop. Beyond the 'your needles won't fall out and get lost' benefit because that was never a problem for me, I probably carry my knittting more carefully than I carry my wallet most of the time. Instead, the big thing I'm really enjoying is the absolute, complete lack of ladders. Not that the ladders killed me, I had made my peace with them long ago, and they were never huge for me-but they were there. But now with this method it's so much easier to eliminate ladders because when you go to start on the next needle you're tightening the yarn around the cable instead of just another needle and it's much easier to tighten the fabric.



I thought maybe I could make this point with this photo above-does it any make sense? On dpns when you try to avoid ladders by pulling the new yarn tight to start the first stitch of a new needle you are only tightening the yarn on the last stitch around the previous needle. With Magic Loop you are actually pulling the yarn tight around the cable which has a much smaller circumference than a needle. The result is less yarn between the last stitch of the last needle and the first stitch of the first one and therefore no ladders! Brilliant! I love it!



I swear I'm totally pulling the fabric tight in that photo too. Isn't that cool? It makes me feel smart like the guys from my new favorite show.



Ok, I know as far as shows go The Big Bang Theory isn't that good, it is very corny sit-com-y but I still can't help but love those characters. Especially Sheldon, I adore him. While I lack the actual hardcore math science knowledge of these true nerds, they possess a geekery I completely envy and probably would totally crush on if they ever existed in real life. That and the novelty t-shirts, sci-fi references and video game obsessions just get me every week.