“Magic Loop” knitting is a technique where you use a long circular needle to knit in the round an amount of stitches that would not actually spread along the length of the needle.   It is accomplished by splitting the working between stitches and pulling up the excess cable.

Many of you who have used this technique to work on shawls are familiar with that magical moment when there is just barely enough stitches on the needle and just barely enough area already knit to actually let the work ride on the needle without pulling up excess cable.

What usually happens is that the work is stretched around and while the cable does just barely fit the stitches, the area of the work isn’t enough to truly let the cable lie flat.  When this happens, the edges are all sorts of ripply.

That’s where the work is now.  Just after I got to that magical ‘no more cable excess’ the work looked more like one of those ‘foldable’ sun hats or collapsible toy bins.   I had to put weights around the sides in order to make this picture:

And I am surprised at an unexpected phenomenon.   I can see the purple arrow and the turquoise arrow points.  I was expecting random-looking stripes between there and the next time solid color points appear.   What I was NOT expecting are the now-visible two-tone point shapes.   These are particularly visible there on the left near the spring.

Another thing I notice:  there are just two readily-visible solid points.  When I noticed the two-tone points, I expected to see four of them, fairly equally spaced around.   There are only three: that one on the left, the one at the bottom, and the one wrapping around the upper-right corner.

I am fascinated with the progression of these unplanned patterns, similar to the ‘unexpected plaids’ that occur from knitting back and forth with highly variegated yarns.  It is entirely a consequence of the dye spacing, the number (and size) of stitches, the number of stitches per round of knitting, and probably a few other mathematical factors I’m not conscious of at this moment.

For now, I am just content with looking at it and discovering how the colors form shapes and designs. And that is sufficient, I think, to continue until I run out of yarn.  I would like to make other color combinations, but I would LOVE to have other people request their favorite colors to be dyed as fades — maybe your school colors, favorite sports team colors, or some other two-tone combination.  Give it a though and put in your order!

Follow