My Tangled Web

I'm determined to finish the other glove this weekend, because if I let myself lose steam I'll never complete the pair. Here's most of the wrist:




It also occured to me, while knitting, how ridiculous double pointed needles are to work with. I'm used to it now, but it just looks like the most unnecessarily complicated thing in the world. Let's see if I can explain what's going on here.

When knitting small tubes like gloves, socks, or even sleeves, it's ideal to knit a tube instead of two flat pieces that are later sewn together. Sewing with yarn is tedious, has a lot of room for error, and makes a big ugly seam. It's better just to knit a tube as you go along, sort of like how in kindergarten you'd make a big string of Play Doh and coil it into a cylinder and let it dry up into a penci holder. To accomplish this task, knitters need three needles to form the yarn into a triangle. If three straight edges form a triangle, the knit piece you make with them will be a tube once you remove the straight edges. Tada! The fourth needle is what you use to work the yarn along the three unmoving straight edges. I know, more than you ever wanted to know, but I find the it fascinating that people came up with all this centuries ago.

When I'm working this monster, it looks like I'm wrestling a tree.