Circular knitting needles questions

[calla lily]

Ok, I started trying to knit a soaker with circular needles and ran into all sorts of problems and had to give up for now. I am a beginner and am teaching myself and my book has no instructions on knitting with circular needles. First the instruction say to join the cast on stitches to make the round. First question is How do I do this? I just kinda knotted it with the tail of the string hanging, but I pretty sure that isn't correct. Anyway, I start knitting the ribbing anyway, and it's going pretty good. My local stores only carry 29" needles so I got one anyway even though the pattern said to use 16" needles. So I was making a loop of the plastic stick out between to stitches. This was working but was very time consuming. So my second question is where is the best (as in cheapest, I'm dirt poor right now) place to buy 16" needles? Well about 5 rows into my soaker I notice that it is twisted. So how in the world did that happen?? So I undid the whole thing and will try again once I get the right needle.

I did make a flat soaker that turned out ok. But even with my mess-ups, I can see myself liking circular knitting.

[tmrhopkins]

I bought my 16 inch needles from beehivewool.com. You need the right length of needles that the pattern calls for.

Cast on the stiches then, make sure they are all straight and then bring the other needle around and start to knit again. It will really be a lot easier with the right size of needles.

Also check out www.about.com. They have a section in their hobbies and crafts that gives good info on how to knit.

Tawnya

[cyborgoddess]

Circular knitting

these are about the cheapest neeldles I've found. Keep an eye out for ebay lots, many people are emptying out their mother/grandmother's knitting basket and just want the needles gone with no real idea of what they have in the basket.

The best trick I've heard about knitting on circulars is to cast on, then knit one round straight, that way you won't twist your knitting, a very common mistake. (Now, you could do it on purpose, continue to knit it to about 10" long and have a very stylish, practical and warm mobius scarf.)

Once you've knit one round straight, you can join the two ends, I like to wrap the tail from the cast on edge around the yarn I am using to make the new stitch, to reinforce the join.

Do you have a local yarn store you can go to for help? If not, how about finding the local senior center, they often have knitting groups and I bet they would love to help you.


Amy

SSP - a blog about knitting