And then there were two...

A couple of months ago I posted a link to this picture, which ran in the local college paper. You might not get a good impression of what I am knitting, but it's a pair of toe up socks, inspired by Ann Budd's article in a recentish Interweave Knits...actually not that recent considering that I was still pregnant when I started this &%**&%)*@ project.

Here is a more representational picture which I took in a brief (naptime!) whirl wind of documenting fever...the better to update my Ravelry Notebook...which has yet to be updated.

For some reason I thought that my first "toe up" project would be a good time to try the "two at once" technique as well...in for a penny in for a pound. And since I suffer from that peculiar disease that causes me spend 2 hours unraveling a tangled skein rather than cutting it (after all that would be two more ends to weave in and that would be tedious and take approximately a minute and a half...yeah), I decided that rather than weigh and divide the ball of yarn half, I would just knit from both ends at the same time. Because that way I would be able to squeeze every last bit of possible yarn out of the ball, and I wouldn't have to throw away that yard and a half that didn't get evenly divided....waste not want not, right?

Turns out that knitting two socks at the same time from opposite ends of the ball is really really irritating. The yarn gets tangled in the needles. The yarn from the inside of the ball has more twist than the yarn from the outside of the ball, and you can't untwist it because it's all connected together. The yarn gets unwound and there is no way to wind it back on it's self because you're knitting off of the outside of the ball. I could go on. I won't though, because none of you are silly enough to try knitting socks that way.

I decided to "fix" the problem by winding the remaining skein into a ball so that both ends were coming off the same side. Not having swift I unwound the ball by wrapping it around a basket. When I got to the point where the two ends met each other I started a traditional round yarn ball, like what the kitties play with. For a few days I knit off the new improved ball...which was not so much improved, since the yarn still got seriously tangled up...although the over twist problem seemed to have been solved at least.

Realizing that I wasn't getting anywhere I unwound the ball once again...this time using a real swift. When I got to the middle of the ball I, steady now, I know you'll all be shocked by this...CUT THE YARN INTO TWO PIECES. Got that? Two socks, two balls of yarn. Whoa. That's the state that is memorialized in the picture above. This was a vast improvement, since two balls means that if the yarn becomes tangled, you can untangle it...shocking, no? However, there is the problem of having two wee balls of yarn rolling around you while you're knitting, and having to stop every few rows to wind them back up and untangle them from your needles.

Then I had a dream. I have been having a lot of dreams lately. I think it's because I spend a lot of time in the "not quite asleep" stage that mothers who are co-sleeping with nursing babies get to know so well. Anyway. In my dream instead of having two socks, and two balls of yarn on two circular needles, I had two socks, and two balls of yarn, but they were each ON THEIR OWN NEEDLE. Crazy the things that come to you when you are half asleep.

Check it out.

And can I just say? Magic loop? No effing kidding magic loop, that shit is the bomb.

Ragnar...who has been up three times during this post to nurse the baby back to sleep...I'll decide when you're done napping you little...precious baby.