Hello! I've been knitting since I was a young girl, have made a couple of sweaters, so I know the basic stitches but now I'm interested in making hats and mittens. Does it matter if I use double pointed needles or a circular needle? I don't have either of those so I don't want to buy them until I know which ones to buy. Is it personal preference, or would certain patterns ask for one or the other? What are the benefits to using one over the other? I know with the circular needle I would be less likely to drop stitches if I'm bringing my work with me. Now that I'm thinking about it I don't know if you can even make mittens on a circular needle.
Thanks in advance for any input!

for mittens, it would be difficult to use a circular needle unless you do the "magic loop" method (if you google that term you'll get tons of links) becuase the circumference of the miten is so tiny. So, double points would be best for htem. For a hat, I prefer 16" circ, but at some point int he top decreasing you'll reach a poitn where the stitches won't stretch around the circular, so you'll again have to move to DPns ;)

Thank you! :happy:

Ya, definatly use dpn's for mittens ;) For hats, I use both. For the main body I use circ's (usually a 16" or 20", 24" are too big). But, when I start decreasing for the top, it get's to small, so I switch to dpn's. A tip about dpn's... don't get metal ones! Use plastic or wood/bamboo. The metal ones keep slipping out :vent:

I've used circulars for adult sized hats, which works well except for at the end. For mittens and hats for my toddler, or dolls, I use dpns, I have a set of metal and a set of wood, the metal slides easier, but we just whipped up the wood ones fast so they aren't the smoothest they could be.

If you learn the two circular needles technique you should be able to use that too, but it seems a bit more confusing to me than dpns. Of course dpns were intimidating to me before I practiced with them a bit too :).

Another vote for dpns. Not the metal ones, yikes! I use mostly plastic and I don't have trouble with dropping stitches off the ends. The metal ones wouldn't even stay in while I was working. :(

I'll cast the dissenting vote for magic loop. I just knit a child's mitten using it (I haven't finished the end of the thumb yet, but I think that's fiddly even with dpn, so it can't be any worse with magic loop, can it?). I also knit a baby sock with it, and my stitches are so much more even and neat using the ML rather than DPN.

I am (slowly) trying to figure out how to do more with ML because I really can't use DPN with my boys. I'll put the knitting down to solve some problem and before I get back to it, the needles will be out and used for nefarious purposes. I'm already knitting flat with circulars, so there is a chance I could slowly transition to just long circs.

Someday....

~amey