Novice knitter looking for a bit of advice please!

[thehamburglar]

Hi, I have recently started knitting - nothing fancy, just practicing at the moment with different stitches and techniques. On the advice of the lady in the local wool shop, I bought some chunky yarn and some 8mm plastic needles just to get started. However, I would like to try a couple of projects from this book and I need to buy some more needles and yarn. My question is, what is the best length of needle to buy? I was looking at 33cm ones on Amazon as one of the projects is a baby blanket (casting on 70 stitches with extra fine merino) and I assume these will be long enough. Is it harder to knit with longer needles or does it not make much difference. I don't want to shell out buy lots of needles in different sizes and lengths until I'm a bit more proficient.

Also, am finding that the end stitches of my practice squares seem to be looser than the rest. How can I get these to be tighter?

Thanks for any advice

Length of needle really depends on the size of the thing you want to knit.

Can you use a 33cm set comfortably? You can obviously use longer needles for small projects (but not the reverse) but extra wire does tend to get tangly which can annoy. However the better the quality the nicer to work with they are, if you see what I mean. Might be worth a trip to your local shop to play with some before buying. Nice tools do make a difference to your enjoyment and they are not exactly break-the-bank.

Loose stiches: pull the wool a bit tighter. Or slip the first stich of each row: makes a nice clean edge.

Have you seen ravelry? You NEED to look at ravelry!

I don't have any issue with length of needles, so can't advise you on that.

On edge stitches, it is often recommended to slip the first stitch rather than knit (or purl) it. I don't tend to need to do that - but I do make sure that the first stitch is fairly firm - the lower one I think tends to loosen due to the turn and then it leaves too much wool for that and the first of the next line to take up properly unless you gently tighten it a bit more.

Not sure about the book, but I ind that to keep he edges of tension squares tight you can either knit into the back of the stitch or only knit it on alternative rows, so effectively you slip the stitch.

You could look at buying a circular needle for a baby blanket, it's 2 needles joined by a flexible cord. You can cast on loads of stitches and knit back and forwards and as the blanket gets heavier it won't be to heavy to hold.

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll go ahead and buy the 33cm needles and see how I get on with those. I've seen the circular needles, they look a bit intimidating.

Yes, I've joined Ravelry but haven't had much time to have a good look at the site. Unfortunately, I don't get much time to myself (for internet browsing or knitting or shopping) as I have a 2 year old and a 9 month baby.

Don't be put off by circulars, they are just as easy to use as ordinary needles. And more convenient for bundling into a bag, less chance of dropped stitches.