Circular needles are not a mystery, and they’re not a strange tool for knitting weird and wonderful items.   Here’s what you need to know:

Circular needles: great for hats, socks and other tubular knitting projects

Simply Put Down Those Straight Needles!

You’re about to knit a blanket for that new little baby in your life.  It is a nice large, flat project, so you reach for a pair of long, straight needles.  Right?  What else would you use?  Well, you might reach, instead, for a circular needle.

No, I’m not kidding.

Yes, circular needles are useful for knitting seamless, large-diameter tubes; they can also be a good choice for knitting flat pieces.

Here are a few reasons to substitute a circular knitting needle for straight needles in your next knitting project.

The Lost Needle Dilemma

On my last getaway to Maryland’s western shore, I found myself slung in a hammock that had been strung between two scarlet oak trees along the bank of a Chesapeake Bay tributary.  I had, of course, brought my knitting along with me (a white, lacey shawl that I was making for my sister).  After a while, the mottled light filtering through the leaves of the trees, the lapping sounds of the water currents, and the rustling of the blue herons’ wings lulled me to sleep.  Upon rousing from my little respite, I drowsily gathered up my knitting and went back inside.  The next morning, I grabbed my knitting basket and headed for the verandah.  I settled comfortably into my rocking chair and pulled out the half-finished shawl.  I was stymied – my inactive needle was missing!  I searched, without success, the area where I reclined the day before (I suspect it rolled away from me while I snoozed and met with an untoward end).  Alas, no more knitting for the remainder of that vacation.  Had I been using a circular needle, I would have seen the delight on my sister’s face a bit sooner.

Oh, Those Tell-Tale Lines

Has life ever gotten in the way of your knitting?  This happens to me more than I’d care to admit.  There have been times when I abandoned an unfinished piece, leaving the stitches on my needle for weeks (or longer!) before getting back to work on the project.  Evidence of my inattention often haunts me in the finished piece.  While my stitches hang there on the needle day after day, they tend to stretch – more so than the stitches in the previous rows.  When I start knitting, again, with my normal tension, I am left with a row of noticeably larger stitches that betrays my wayward behavior.  Knitting on circular needles can eliminate uneven row gauge that results from fits of stop-and-start knitting.  The cable portion of a circular needle has a diameter that is smaller than the ends that we use to knit the stitches.  When we put the knitting away for the night (or the month) we can simply slide all of the stitches onto the cable portion of the needle.  As the stitches are larger than the cable that runs through them, they will be less likely to stretch out of shape – and no one will ever know if we’ve been negligent!

Taming the Cumbersome Beast

When we use straight needles to knit wide pieces, we need long needles to accommodate all of the stitches.  I frequently find those long knitting needles to be unwieldy, especially when knitting in confined spaces such as cars, trains, buses, and airplanes.   Circular needles allow us to concentrate the bulk of our work on the flexible cable that hangs directly in front of us, as opposed to having our work dangling from the straight needle off to one side or the other.  Additionally, having the weight of the work on our laps helps us avoid arm and hand fatigue.  This is a tremendous benefit to those with arthritis or other medical conditions, as well as to anyone who knits for hours at a time.

Now that you know why you would knit flat pieces on a circular needle, you’ll want to check our next post to learn how to do this (it’s easy – really!).