Using 2 circular needles

[landolphe]

I recall, but can not find here, someone's explanation of how/why to use 2 sets of circular needles (or mismatched tips on one set) to change stitch size between rows.

Lost as usual,

Lando

[janelanespaintbrush]

They are several reasons why you might want to use different sized needles... some that come to mind...

A lot of knitters purl more loosely than they knit, and one way to compensate for that is to use one needle size for knit rows (in stockinette, this will be the right side), and a slightly smaller size for purl rows (wrong side).

Tight knitters might want to use circular needles with a smaller left needle tip so that their stitches are not as tight when knitting off on the left needle, but are the desired size when being formed on the right needle.

Amy also talks about using different sized needle tips when doing the 2 circ method for small diameter knitting on interchangeables. It's a way to avoid having to have 4 of the same size needle tips. (It uses the same principle of knitting off a smaller needle as described in the paragraph above.) See her video for details.

Hope that made sense. Given what you said about changing size between rows, I'd guess it's the first explanation, but I thought I'd mention the others too. Of course, it could be something entirely different.

[landolphe]

I'm making a Scribble-Scrabble Scarf (Lion pattern) that alternated each 2 rows between an extra bulky yarn and a crochet cottonyarn. Patterns says knit everything on US 15 needles. Did that, but size of stitches in each yarn are quite different. I am a loose knitter. Tried doing heavy yarn with 15s and light yarn with 35s (don't have any sizes in between)--it was better, but did not look quite right (?).

Lando

[suzeeq]

It's supposed to look different due to the different thicknessess of the yarn used. Can you post a picture that shows why you don't think it was coming out right?

sue