Today I’m going to show you how to knit
with double pointed needles. Double pointed needles usually come in a set
of five or six, and they’re used to knit in the round. Now, you might be thinking, I thought circular
needles are for knitting in the round? What’s this double pointed needle business? You’re absolutely right. Circular needles are for knitting in the round,
but they can’t knit everything. The smallest circular needle is sixteen inches,
and that’s still too big to knit things like a sock or a mitten or the top of a hat
- basically things with a small circumference. I mean, how is this sock going to fit on a
sixteen inch circular needle? Well, it’s not. So, what are we going to do? Enter double pointed needles. Double pointed needles are specialised for
knitting small things in the round like socks, mittens, the tops of hats, and even the teeny
tiny finger portions of gloves. Yep, we can get real small with these bad
boys. So, how do double pointed needles work? Okay, let me do a quick analogy for you. You can think of knitting on circular needles
like taking a train. The stitches get on the train, or they’re
cast on, and then they’re knit around and around and around. They never get off the train until they reach
their final destination, at which point, they disembark, or we cast them off, and they journey
is complete. On double pointed needles, however, our stitches
are not on a train. They’re on a bus. And they’re not taking the bus from point
A to point B. They’re getting on the bus, going a little ways, transferring to another
bus, going a little ways, transferring again, and around and around they go. They’re transferring from one bus to another
bus until they reach their final destination, also known as casting off. So, double pointed needles are not as direct
as circular needles, but they’re also not that hard to master. So with that bus analogy in mind, let’s
get into the demo and go through this step-by-step. I’ve got four double pointed needles, and
I’m going to start casting on stitches onto one of my needles. The number of stitches you cast on will depend
on what you’re knitting or what your pattern calls for. If you’re just practicing, you can cast
on 45 stitches. That’s the number of stitches that I cast
on for this demonstration. So now I’ve cast on 45 stitches onto one
needle, and I need to start dividing these stitches onto two more needles. I want my stitches to be spread evenly on
a total of three needles. So 45 divided by three is 15, so that means
that each needle should have 15 stitches. You can do the same. You can divide your stitches by three, and
the number that you get will be the number of stitches that each needle should have. So don’t worry if your stitches don’t
divide perfectly. Just round up or down. That’s totally fine. So now I’m picking off stitches from my
needle with a bunch of stitches onto my bare needle. So 14 and 15. Alright, so I’ve got 15 stitches onto this
needle, and I’m going to push it so that the stitches are in the middle of the needle. I don’t want them to accidentally fall off. Now here’s my third needle, and I’m going
to start picking off some stitches. I’ll need 15. So here’s four … alright, so I’ve just
picked off 15 onto my third needle, and I’m going to push my stitches so that they’re
in the middle of my needle. I’ll do the same for this third needle here
- just push it so that my stitches are in the center of the needle. Now that our stitches are evenly divided,
let’s talk about how to hold our needles. Our needles before we join in the round are
like this weird jumbly thing. They feel awkward and kind of unstable. So, first what we’ll do is look for the
needle that has your longtail cast on and your ball of yarn attached to it. So you can see right away that would be this
needle. This needle has what’s left of our longtail
and it also has our working yarn, which has our ball of yarn attached to it. So this is our guy. We want to keep this needle on our right side. Now on the left side, we’re going to use
this needle, and just push the stitches up close to the tip of our needle. I’m keeping that little triangle shape. I’m going to use my naked needle, our working
needle, this is the needle that has no stitches on it whatsoever. I’m going to use my naked needle, and push
into the first stitch on my left needle. So here we go. I’ve isolated that stitch, and I’m going
to push my naked needle into it. You can see my naked needle has speared into
this first stitch. Now I’m going to take my working yarn on
my right needle, and I’m going to wrap it around my naked needle. 3:08 I’m going to go underneath my right
needle and then over onto my naked needle. So I’ll show you again. Here’s my working yarn, and I’m going
to go underneath my right needle, underneath that naked needle, and then wrap it around
like this. Wrap it around my naked needle and then just
knit into this first stitch using my working yarn. I’ve knit into it and now I’m going to
push it off my left needle and make it nice and tight, give it a little tug. And now if you look closely, you can see that
I’ve joined in the round. Now I’ve got four needles into the mix. Pretty cool, right? So let’s continue knitting across our left
needle. I’ve knit into that first stitch. I’m going to move into the second stitch. Let’s push into it and continue knitting. So we’re moving across our first needle,
and we’re nearing the end of it. Here we go, and there it is. Alright, so here’s our last stitch. Cool! So now we’ve knit across our first needle,
right? Here it is. Awesome. So now we’re back to three needles in our
work. Little triangle shape, and we have our naked
needle once again. So what I usually do when I finish knitting
the stitches from one needle is I push my stitches to the middle of my needle. Right into the middle. That keeps my stitches nice and secure. They have less risk of falling off my needle. Okay cool! So now I’m going to bring my naked needle
back in, and I’m going to turn my work like this. So here’s my working yarn. My working yarn needle is always on my right
side. And now I’m going to push my needle down
so that my stitches are nice and close to the tip of my needle. Then I’m going to continue all over again. Here’s my naked needle, my working needle. Push it into the first stitch, and then I’m
going to take my working yarn and go around my naked needle. Can you see? It’s a little hard to see, so I’m going
to twist this here. I’m going to give it a little tug. Wrap it around my naked needle and then just
knit into it. So it’s a little bit complicated at first
because you’ve got three needles going on and doing their own thing, but you’ll get
used to it. And here’s my last stitch on my left needle. Let’s just knit into that. Okay. Cool. So now I’ve finished knitting off my needle,
and we have our naked needle again. Again, I’m going to push my stitches onto
the middle of my needle. Okay, so we’ve just knit stitches from two
needles. This one and this one. Now we’re on our last needle, so I’m going
to turn my needle configuration again. Here’s my working yarn. This is on my right side, and here’s my
needle. I’m going to push it so that my stitches
are up close to the tip. This is going to be the last needle before
we get to the beginning of the round. So here’s my naked needle. We’re going to push it into the first stitch
of my left needle. Here’s my working yarn. We’re going to go around my working needle,
and then pull it through and pop it off the needle. I’m going to go into the next stitch and
do the same thing. Here we go. Here’s my last stitch, and bada-bing, bada-boom,
we are finished our first round. So let’s take a look, take stock. We have just completed our first round, and
I know that because here is my longtail cast on. The longtail from our longtail cast on marks
the beginning and end of our round. It’s almost like our own little stitch marker. So we can just keep on going. Your working yarn is always going to be on
the right side. Your stitches to be knit will be on your left
needle. Push the stitches up close to the tip of the
needle. Naked needle is going to go into the first
stitch on your left needle. Use your working yarn and go around that needle,
and then knit into that stitch. Pop it off the needle. So this is where our bus analogy comes in. We are taking one bus. In this analogy our needle is a bus. So here’s our first bus, and once we get
to the end of our journey on our first bus, we’re going to move on to our second bus. This would be our second bus. We’re transferring over to our second bus. Once we’ve completed that, we’re going
to move over to our third bus. Transfer over to another bus, and around and
around we go. Our whole journey is made up of transferring
from one needle to the next needle, and that’s all there is to it. Thanks so much for watching. If you liked this video, then please give
a big thumbs up, and if you want to see more technique videos like this, then make sure
to subscribe. And hey, if there’s a technique you’re
struggling with or one that you’d like to learn, then let me know about it down in the
comments. I’m Davina from sheepandstitch.com. Thanks for watching, and happy knitting.
