Sunday, January 27, 2008

Heart 2 Heart Socks, two at a time


Now that I have an ungodly amount of circular needles, I can try out the different combinations of ways to knit socks - using 2 circs, using magic loop, how about 2 socks on 2 circs or using magic loop?

I decided to first try 2 socks on 2 circs - using the Heart 2 Heart pattern found in Socks, Socks, Socks. The cast on for both socks left such a tangled mess I had to abandon it, and in a moment of crisis decide if I was being to ambitious for wanting to do both at once, and that I should first try 1 at a time on 2 circs first and then move on to two, or perhaps just stick with conventional dpns and try another time.

But that doesn't sound like being boss of your knitting, so I decided for a compromise. I did 3 rows of each separately and then transferred them to the circs. This eliminated the difficulty for me when starting, with yarns all over the place. (it would be good to weave in the tail immediately if anyone attempts this - it leaves only two yarns that can get tangled).

Of course, soon I'll have to attach different colors and I'll be in the same yarn mess as I was before.

How I feel about knitting with 2 circs, well, it does seem to take immensely longer to make any sort of progress, but I guess that's to be expected. I would think the advantage of making 2 identical pairs of anything to offset any of the negatives with dealing with the cables. Yes, people don't like dpns because they have to deal with 4 or 5 needles, but dealing with 4 circs waving around in the air and wrapping up in all the yarn tails around can be just as frustrating.

Maybe magic loop may have a bit of an edge as it cuts down the needle count even further. At this moment I just cannot see in my head how you'd pick up all the gusset stitches with 1 circular.

I'm so used to dpns I never really had a problem with them, but now having 3 different ways to do things can add a small bit of variety when making drawerfuls of socks. Unless there's a lot of color work and yarn switching though, it will now be very hard to convince me it is better to do some separately.

1 comment:

Carla Maria said...

Hmmm I do need to learn magic loop. I've been meaning to actually try to figure it out myself but with homework I never got around to reading up on any tutorials. Will you teach meeee~?

LOL well I was thinking maybe this week I can pull off coming by? My Wednesday is really perfect for a knitting/martini night, would you happen to be free?