Nine Inches
Don’t mistake the title for anything lewd or bawdy. Unless you tend to get that kind of excited from knitting supplies. I know some people who come dangerously close to taking the craft down that road.
Anyhow, the nine inches I’m referring to are specifically of the Clover 9″ size 2 circular needles from Twisted Knitter I wrote about several posts back. I finally cleared my WiP queue enough to cast something on to the tiny circ and try it out.
It’s not quite a sock. I figured it would be wiser to try out this new needle on a pattern I already know, so I cast on for another pair of Jacoby fingerless mitts, this time using my Lane Cervinia sock yarn from my stash.
Casting on is far less tedious on these circs (obviously) than on DPNs, but I did feel a bit clumsier once I joined into the round and began knitting my first round or two than I felt using DPNs. This perplexed me just a little bit since using larger circs for larger projects, it’s always very easy, comfortable and fairly mindless to do. I think it was the fact the needle is so small and the cable is relatively stiff so you feel almost scared you’re going to break it as you knit.
As Janet said in her post about her experience with the 9″ circular, there does seem to be a bit of play between the stitches and I do find myself moving and adjusting them along the needle to even them out, but it’s nothing terribly serious. So far, I’ve only been doing ribbing, so once I get to the gusset on these mitts, my opinions may change.
As far as things have gone so far with them, I’m enjoying not having to move between DPNs several times per round and make sure there aren’t ladders between each needle. I love DPNs, but I’m also loving this alternative to them.
2 Comments to “Nine Inches”
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My grandmother has a few of the 9″ Clover circs that she uses mainly for making premie hats. I agree with you that the cables are rather stiff. I can see them being very useful for things between 8″ and maybe 12″ in diameter, like hats or newborn clothes and whatnot. For smaller items, I would imagine having to continually adjust the stitches would become tedious and irksome.
I think I’ll just stick to magic looping on my 40″ circs.
I can easily see using the 9″ for a primary small diameter circular knitting project needle, honestly. While it was awkward at first and I think my first few rounds were sloppier than I’d like as I was getting the feel for a different tool, I wouldn’t say the circ is at all unpleasant or irritating to use.
I end up doing a fair amount of adjusting on larger circs as well, just because I’m a tight knitter and my stitches sometimes don’t move as fluidly as they might. I’ll probably end up using the circ as an alternative for making socks or gloves when my size 2 DPNs have something going on them.
Also, I seem to go faster with the circ than on DPNs of the same size. Probably because I’m not moving between several needles as I do a round.