(no subject)

[muladhara]

Hi guys, lurker and knitting n00b here. I apologise if there's an answer to this somewhere on the community but, at the time of writing, I don't have time to look.

See, I like making stuffed toys - I can also crochet, so that's easy, just going round and round, but with knitting, double pointed needles present me with a problem - laddering between the stitches over two needles. Is there any way to fix this?

I suspect the answer is "practice", or "circular needles". Practice I can do; circular needles, not so much (short of cash and nearby sources to purchase from). Any advice would be gratefully received, as it's driving me demented.

ETA: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who left comments and advice on this post. You are all awesome! :D

Comments

[adair]

Circular needles are not necessarily the answer if you are knitting something fairly small, like most stuffed toys. As you reduce the circumference a circular needle becomes impossible to use and you need to switch to the double-pointed needles. I have to do this on watch caps, and toy heads and arms and legs will get small faster. Learning double-pont technique takes some practice before it gets fast. I find pulling the second stitch and moving stitches if I can helps a lot. With stuffed toys you are probably not using sock yarn but you might need the tightness I use there.

[lannamichaels]

Not to tell the OP to buy circs, but just a note on this: on circulars, you can do magic loop, which is amazing and really magic. :) I don't own dpns and can still do small stuff. :)

[muladhara]

I do have some circular needles (probably should've mentioned that, huh?) but not a lot of sizes. I will have to check out the magic loop (I have heard of it, but thought it only applied to sock knitting).

[lannamichaels]

Magic loop is great for anything small; I use it to start hats, for example. Magic loop requires a reasonably flexible and reasonably long cable. I use knitpicks options needles, which are really flexible and come in different sizes. I've never tried it with other cables, so I'm not sure which sorts have flexible enough cables.

[muladhara]

Awesomesauce! I don't know how flexible my circulars are, apart from the metal cabled pair (they don't like me ;) ). But I would've thought most types with a nylon cable should be OK (guess it depends on the make like everything else, though).

[ariandar]

I use a pair of circs the same size, all the way down to closing the toe of socks (10 stitches on each). Works very well. Definitely flipping them around frequently as it gets smaller and smaller of course!