Knitting in Circles

It was laundry day, which, for me and the bearded fellow, meant a solid block of time spent at the local eco-laundromat. Clothes in the dryer, knitting in hand, I sat down to make some serious project progress.

I knew she was there before she started speaking.

Lady: (Appreciatively gazing). Ooh, what are you making?

Me: (Announcing, with far too much enthusiasm). Two baby sweaters!

Lady: (Now blankly staring). How…?

I looked down at my project.

She had a point.

In my hands were two sweaters, worked in the round to the armholes, and then split to two circular needles to work the front and back separately. Four stitch markers dotted the project like sprinkles on a cupcake. Two large cakes of yarn were in a bag at my feet.

Her question of ‘how’ was not so much a question of skill, but a statement of incredulity at my self-inflicted complexity. It was quite the sight. To my right, the bearded fellow lightly chuckled while slowly moving his book up to cover the large grin on his face.

In my head, my project looked something like this:

Neat, organized, exactly how I imagine every knitter’s project looks.

In reality, it looked more like a scribble monster. Messy, disorganized, exactly how I imagine dust bunnies look like up close. Top hat included.

It took some show and tell to assure her that I was, in fact, knitting two baby sweaters using the magic loop method. Fact: it is much easier to explain magic loop when your project looks, well, like magic in a single loop. Before things became more confusing, I distracted my onlooker by letting her pet the ultra-soft alpaca yarn. Works every time.