…isn’t what it’s all cracked up to be.
On Tuesday I mentioned that I had purchased a set of those cool stretchy circulars that some have seen (and some haven’t) around the internets. I promised a review after I had given them a run, so here goes.
It all started with optimism…I had the yarn and the pattern. I also had the new toy.
First I learned that my stretchy cast on isn’t as stretchy as I thought since I couldn’t stretch it out to the 10″ I needed to be able to have the two ends meet to commence the knitting in the round. (sorry, no picture of that part…) So I switched over to my trusty KnitPicks circs (which, as I have already discussed, are like buttah. LOVE them.) and knit about an inch of 1×1 ribbing.
At that point I decided to give the novelties a go again and switched over. These things…how can I put it delicately…um…they suck. I mean, the stitches meet, you don’t have to fiddle with the magic loop or the pointy sticks BUT you DO have to fiddle with the stitches when they need to pass over the join. Every. Single. Stitch. This did not speed up my knitting in any way shape or form.
Here is a picture of the KP circs and the stretchy ones:
See where the join is on the KP one? (the bottom needle in the picture) It’s nice and smooth, and tapered so the stitches smoothly slide onto the needle so you don’t have to yank or nudge or fiddle. It makes knitting fun – or at least funner that it is with crappy needles. Now look at the stretchy join. Barely any taper so every time a stitch meets the join, you have to fiddle it onto the needle. Definitely NOT fun.
After three rows I switched back to the KP circs, flung the damned stretchy ones (to HELL with the directions – oh and they really fly when you use the slingshot method). I made some amazing progress in 24 hours.
So, my final verdict is this: Keep your $17. If you *really* want to buy circular needles to knit socks, you can get three sets of Knitpicks circs for that price. Guess which ones I’m sticking with?