Knitpicks needles and the magic loop

On Tuesday, something exciting happened. I received two new Knitpicks needles in the mail! A size 0 and a size 1, 32" long circular. I've wanted to try magic loop for a while, now; I simply lacked the needles. After some debate, I decided to try out the new Knitpicks line...

and I like them! A word of warning before I offer my thoughts, though. I'm not exactly what you'd call a needle connoisseur. Most of my circs and DPNs are made of bamboo; I have a couple Addi Turbos which I like for certain things. This lack of connoisseurship is as much due to lack of purchasing power as to desire to spend money on yarn rather than needles as well as an "if it seems to work, use it. If it doesn't, try something else."

I like DPNs well enough for socks, but when I'm sitting by a table, the DPNs tend to bonk against me or the table, which gets annoying. I had a hunch that the Magic Loop would be less cumbersome in this regard, so I went with the "try something else" option.

Thus far, these needles are light, the cord is very flexible (a plus for magic loop, as near as I can tell), slippery but not too slippery. They are pointy to the point of being dangerous, and my thumbs and forefingers might develop a callus or two. We'll see. The join seems fine, but since I'm not quite knitting circularly, I can't quite comment. As a novice magic looper, the join seems to be just fine for those purposes. Finally, the 32" cord length works for magic loop. I've read that longer is better, and that's probably true, but this is the longest length so far, so I'll work with that. And it works! A rather low-key review in comparison to some, but the long and short is that the needles get two thumbs up!

I can't help but ask, a la Amazon.com-style: Was this "review" helpful to you?

This week was the first real, full week of school for me, so I'm pretty tired. Meeting new people, going to class (yes, I'm in a class after all, as we're reading second exam books), going to meetings, chit-chating, figuring out how to stay on the right sides of the different personalities that make up academia... it's exhausting. So I will save further magic loop reflections for later. My FIL is in town this weekend, and there's a small fiber festival on Saturday. Not to mention it seems that every-other grad student I know is hosting a party on this same busy weekend! Life is suddenly, very suddenly, crazy again. Last but not least, I've signed up for Socktoberfest!