If you learned to knit years ago and wonder why you’ve never heard of magic loop, that’s because it is a recent invention. A booklet titled “The Magic Loop” was published in 2002, and the technique has since become very popular.
Simply put, magic loop is a technique enabling you to knit
small items such as socks or mittens in the round with a circular needle 40-47”
long. Circular needles short enough to span a sock do not exist; imagine trying
to knit with, say, an 8” circular – the tips would be too tiny to grasp. With
magic loop, you put half the stitches on one tip and half on the other, with
the cable forming a loop between the two halves. There are several advantages
to magic loop: sliding the stitches onto the cable when you put your work down
makes them unlikely to slide off the tips; when decreasing, such as for the
crown of a hat, there is no need to switch to dpns, as you would have to do if
working with a shorter circular needle; and you can knit two socks or two mittens
or two sleeves at the same time, making sure they are identical and finishing
both at the same.
How does it work? Cast on half the stitches you need and
place a marker. To keep from accidentally losing the loop, you can use a large
bead instead of a standard circular marker. Cast on the remaining stitches and
slide the stitches on to the cable. Grab the cable at the marker and pull the
cable out in a loop. Half your stitches will be on one side of the loop and
half on the other. Hold your needle tips facing to the right, with the working yarn
(the yarn connected to the ball) coming off the back needle. Slide the stitches
on the front needle’s cable onto the needle tip and pull the back needle out to
get enough slack to be able to use it to knit the stitches on the front needle,
sliding the back stitches further down the cable. When the stitches on the
front needle have been worked, slip the
marker and turn your needles to again face the right; the half row just worked
will now be on the back needle. Repeat the process of sliding the back stitches
onto the cable and the front stitches onto the needle tip so that you can knit
across the second half of the stitches, completing one round. Place a marker to
note the beginning of round, or just note that the yarn tail and the working
yarn will be in the same place when a round is completed.
Any small item knit in the round can be knit by magic loop.
Sock patterns are especially easy to convert to this method – instead of
dividing the sock stitches onto 3 or 4 dpns, you will have the sole (bottom of
the foot) stitches on one needle tip and the instep (top of foot) stitches on
the other.
Try it and see how you like it. Some people much prefer
magic loop, while others much prefer using double points. The only way to know
is to try it, and it will give you another tool in your knitting tool belt. And
speaking of adding tools, there is a third alternative, using two shorter
circular needles, which I have never tried. Once I do, and add it to my
knitting tool belt, I’ll report back!