Knitting Needle Types and Materials

Needles are not interchangeable equipment with a size number attached. Shape decides what you can knit, material decides how the yarn behaves on the needle, and tip profile decides whether a stitch pattern is pleasant or a fight.

The four shapes

Straight needles are single pointed with a stopper at one end, sold in pairs, and worked flat. They are the traditional image of knitting and they are the least versatile option. Anything wider than the needle is long crowds up, and the weight of the fabric hangs off your wrists.

Circular needles are two tips joined by a flexible cable. They work in the round, which is what most sock, hat and sweater patterns assume, and they also work perfectly well flat by turning at the end of each row. The fabric sits in your lap on the cable rather than on your wrists, which is why many knitters use circulars exclusively.

Double pointed needles, or DPNs, come in sets of four or five and are pointed at both ends. They handle small circumferences, such as sock cuffs, mitten thumbs and the crown of a hat, where a circular cable will not bend far enough.

Interchangeable sets are circular tips that screw or click onto cables of different lengths. Bought once, a set covers most sizes and lengths and works out cheaper than accumulating fixed circulars, at the cost of joins that can loosen and occasionally snag.

Materials, grip and speed

Metal needles, usually nickel plated brass or stainless steel, are the fastest. Stitches slide freely, which suits sticky wools, and the tips can be machined very fine. That same slipperiness is a liability with a slick yarn like bamboo or silk, where stitches will happily leave the needle on their own.

Wood and bamboo grip. They warm to the hand, they are quiet, and they slow stitches enough to make slippery yarns manageable and to help nervous beginners. Fine sizes in bamboo will flex and eventually snap, so they suit medium and larger gauges better.

Carbon fibre sits in between: light, stiff even in small sizes, with a slight grip. Plastic and acrylic needles are cheap, light and gentle on the hands, and they are useful in very large sizes where a metal needle would be unpleasantly heavy.

Match the tip to the stitch pattern

Sharp, long tapered tips make lace easy, because decreases such as slip slip knit and knit three together require the tip to enter two or three stitches at a steep angle. They also make it easier to split a plied yarn and to hurt a fingertip.

Blunter, rounder tips suit plain stocking stitch, garter and stranded colourwork at speed, and they are kinder to loosely spun singles. Cable work sits between the two. Most knitters end up owning both profiles in their most used sizes.

Sizing systems and where they trip you up

There are three systems in circulation and only one of them is reliable. Metric sizing gives the actual shaft diameter in millimetres. US sizing uses numbers that increase with diameter. Old UK and Canadian sizing used numbers that decrease as the needle gets thicker, which is the reverse, and you will meet it in vintage patterns.

The Craft Yarn Council's hooks and needles guidance is blunt about which to trust: US manufacturers use numbers, letters and metric sizing on packaging, but because letter and number sizing varies from company to company you should rely on the millimetre size, which is an accurate measurement. Its conversion table puts 2.25 mm at US 1, 4 mm at US 6, 5 mm at US 8 and 6 mm at US 10, with crochet hooks running 2.25 mm at B-1, 4 mm at G-6, 5 mm at H-8 and 6.5 mm at K-10 and a half.

The same council's Standard Yarn Weight System pairs recommended needle ranges with each yarn category, from US 000 to 1 for lace weight up to size 17 and larger for jumbo, though again these are guidelines and the pattern gauge governs. A needle gauge, a small plate with drilled holes, settles arguments about unmarked needles in seconds.

Cable length and small circumferences

Circular cable length should be slightly shorter than the circumference you are knitting, otherwise stitches will not reach around. A 16 inch circular suits hats, 24 inch suits sleeves and yokes, 32 to 40 inch suits sweater bodies and shawls.

For anything smaller than a 16 inch circumference, choose between DPNs, two circulars worked as a pair, magic loop, which uses one long circular of 32 inches or more with the cable pulled out in a loop at two points, and short 9 inch circulars made specifically for socks. Magic loop is the most flexible, since one long needle handles every small circumference you will meet.