Knit for Brains dot Net

There’s a fine book called Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi. As you can tell, I disagree with the sentiment. Sorry. Socks Suck on Two Circular Needles.

As of this writing I have just begun my first sock. I thank God there is more than one way, and especially that there is the magic loop method that uses one circular needle.

The idea of knitting a sock with a hedgehog of dpns was never attractive to me. Frankly, it also looks like bad feng shuei, what with all those needles pointing at everyone. So I never gave that method a thought. My cousin Leigh was going to try them but I’m urging her to use magic loop.

So I did at first test the method with two circular needles. For some reason I avoided the magic loop at first as it sounded too magical. Complete ignorance there. Anyway, the two circ method is done with one at the back of the sock and one at the front, with half the loops on each. In all honesty it was visually confusing to see both needles hanging there. Also, the weight of the back needle caused that half of the beginning of the sock to hang strangely and that only got me more confused.

Again, at first the magic loop seemed really alien. How could that even be possible? But having given up on the two circular method I had to try magic loop and it really is the best. It’s very easy to tell what you are doing, where you are, and repositioning the needles for the turn to the next half round is a snap. On two circs I was confused at that point also. I kept getting mixed up about which one to move in which direction. With one circular needle it’s very clear. There’s only one thing you CAN do. You just slide your filled up working needle out of the loops and your emptied left needle back into the other loops. The working end of your circular needle stays the working end, going round and round, chasing the other needle as you knit. Turn the work, move the needle tips to the start position and start the next half round. It is so easy! Good thing. I was running out of ways to knit socks!

I was also happy to see that there was not even the slightest sign of laddering at the turns, even without me pulling the yarn tight for the first stitch.

Here's my test tube. Even with this space between the left needle and the back cable there were no ladders.

There’s a little more to doing socks on one circular needle. This probably applies to using two circs as well. The best pictures of sock construction for this method I found are in How to Knit Socks: Three Methods Made Easy, by Edie Eckman. Apparently, there are ways to position various sections of the stitches for different parts of the sock, so do look into it before starting off.

I have the Sweater Workshop book by Jacqueline Fee which calls for dpns to knit sleeves and collars, so I did buy a set, but now that I’ve tasted the magic loop I think I can use it for that as well, so I ordered a sixty inch cable for my Options needles and will use that.

So there you go. I hope you enjoy, and if you use the other two methods or gave up on them do try the magic loop. I think you will be glad. Use a 40 inch circular to give yourself enough room.

And someone has a book on how to do two socks on one circular needle. I can see that would work as well, but you would have to contend with two sources of yarn, or more if you are doing multiple colors.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

- Eric

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