Get-Ready-for-Spring Sock Sale!
Plus, how do you magic loop?
With the price of things already going up due to tariffs, I thought I’d do a little anti-tariff, get-ready-for-spring sock pattern sale!
Having a new project to concentrate on can be terribly therapeutic, especially with everything going on these days.
Use code SOCKSALE to get 20% off all sock patterns on Ravelry and Etsy. Code is good until 11:59pm PDT on Saturday, March 15.
As for me, I’ve been working on this pair of Shamrockin’ Socks that I pulled out again last week. Although it seems like either I knit a few rounds in a day, or an entire section and a half — there is no in-between. But I love the days where I can focus on this for longer. In the past several months I’ve realized that stranded colorwork is incredibly soothing to knit. Why? Because it takes all of your focus. When I can really get into this project (like those section-and-a-half days), I’m much more relaxed because it takes my mind off everything.
I’m actually further along than this picture. I’m on the last section! But I took this picture because there was someone in a knitting group asking about how people do magic loop during the gusset of a sock, because they didn’t like keeping all of the gusset stitches on one needle.
There were a lot of different answers in the group, and it was a good reminder that not everyone does things the same way, and that’s okay! Someone else’s method might actually work better for you! But it made me wonder, and I thought we could share different ideas:
How do you magic loop, especially in the gusset area?
As you can see above, I make a triangle by separating the gusset stitches in half and pulling out an extra loop at that point. This works as long as your needle is at least 32” (81cm) long. No one taught me to do this, but since I learned to knit socks on DPNs and was already used to dividing the gusset stitches in half and putting them on different needles, this made sense to me. For me, it does make it easier than keeping all the gusset stitches together, because there is less pulling where those gusset stitches join the instep stitches. A bonus is easily being able to count each half of the gusset stitches to know that you’re decreasing evenly on both sides so that you don’t miss a decrease. I keep the triangle until my gusset decreases are complete, then I get rid of the extra loop afterwards.