Short circular needles
I’m a new convert to short circular needles for knitting sleeves. After a few false starts on the sleeve of the Bronwyn sweater, I asked my knitting pal Ari for her recommendation on sleeve knitting needles. She uses the KnitPro Zing short circulars, and called them “gamechanging”. It took me a few hours to get used to them, but now I heartily agree with her.
I’ve never really been a fan of magic loop knitting. It does the trick, sure - but it really breaks your flow to have to adjust your stitches every half a round, and it doesn’t protect you against pulling that last stitch on the cable a little bit too tight. So I’ve been a double-pointed needle girl for the last few years, which of course has its own downsides. It’s very clacky and messy, and it just adds a bit more cognitive load to the knitting process. Generally, I don’t mind that little extra mental labour, but the Bronwyn is fully cabled, including the sleeves, and I think subconsciously I was just finding it a bit too much.
I’m not saying that cables on DPNs are too hard to handle - it absolutely is doable. But I realised I wasn’t getting into the swing of the project, and I found myself leaving it on the side for weeks because I wasn’t enjoying it, and then having to remember where I left off. It was a bit of extra overhead that I didn’t need, as I was going through a particularly busy period of my life.
So, I frogged the 60 or so rows of cabling I’d done (!) and started again with the short circulars.
That first evening sucked. I had to re-learn how to hold the needles. I found myself gripping them with an iron claw - particularly that super short left needle. My hands and wrists felt tight and cramped, and I regretted my choices.
But by the next day, I had found a rhythm. I used my hands only to support the needles, not to try to fix them in time and space through sheer force. This video from Very Pink Knits has some very useful tips on how to scoot the stitches around, which helped massively.
Now I’m absolutely flying along, and I’ve gotten into the swing of the cable pattern again. After a few months of almost-but-not-quite dreading the project, new life has been breathed into it, and I’m enjoying it again. I’m looking forward to knitting a straight stockinette sleeve on these, as it’ll go so quickly!