Knitting Needles

A knitting needle or knitting pin is a long stick or rod used as a tool in the manufacture of hand knitted fabric. more...

The needle is used to reach through a knitting stitch in order to snag a bight of yarn and pull a length back through the stitch to form a new loop at the top of the current wale of stitches. The simplest requirements of knitting needles are that they must be smooth, thin and long enough to reach through a stitch and strong enough not to break while manipulating the bight of yarn. Knitting needles, commonly used in pairs, are the only essential tools for hand knitting (Thomas, 1938; Hiatt, 1988).

Overview

Knitting needles have also been called knitting sticks, knitting pins, knitting wires, or simply wires or rods (Rutt, 2003). Length and thickness of the needles vary depending on the type of yarn used (e.g., fine or thick) and the type of fabric to be produced (e.g., firm or loose).

The most widely recognized form of knitting needle, probably invented in the mid 19th century, is usually called a straight needle. Straight needles are narrowed nearly to a point at one end and capped at the other with a knob or head (like the head of a straight pin), and are used almost exclusively for knitting flat two-dimensional fabrics like rectangles and squares. The needles are popular because the knob at the end of each needle prevents the stitches from inadvertently falling off the needles. Fictional depictions of knitting in movies, television programs, animation, and comic strips almost always show knitting done on straight needles. Both Wallace and Gromit and Monty Python, for example, show knitting being done with straight needles.

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