Evolution or Revolution?

Notice anything different in this picture?

Since I began knitting socks, I have avoided using short needles. I was always afraid of stitches falling off. My fear was about at the same level as my fear of running out of yarn, which as my stash shows, is just a little ridiculous. Yarn to the point of ridiculous. (I'm working on it. Its like legumes, only softer.)

As you can see, I am using two sets of short needles here. Not the really short 4 inch ones, but a nice comfortable 6 inch needle.

I'm trying these because winter is coming, and so are longer sleeves. The 8 inch needles keep jabbing into my sleeves. I don't want to have to push up my sleeves all the time, and I really don't want to have to shorten the sleeves of every warm thing I own.

It occurred to me one chilly day back in August, how much I was beginning to dislike the longer needles. Unbidden, unlooked for, unasked, in popped the thought, I should try shorter needles.

I'm trying out bamboo needles too. While the bamboo are OK, and I am not breaking them with my Vulcan death grip, as I expected, the yarn just does not move as easily over the needles as they do on the other short set. Not my first choice.

Tools are such an individual preference. The way you hold your hands, micro movements you have developed, the way you like the knitting to move across the needles, warmth or coolness of the needle in your hand and sometimes even commitment to the environment, can factor in, to make a needle you love versus a needle you are so so about. It's kind of nice that we have all these options.

While I'm enjoying my foray to shortie needles, I no longer have to have shorties in every size. When I start a pair of socks, I just grab 5 needles that look about the same and go. I get out the gauge only when I blog about it. This morning while checking over the needles in the socks on the go, I realized something. All the pairs I routinely pick up to knit are on 2.5 mm needles. The socks from the bottom of the knitting bag, are on 2.25 and 2.0 mm needles. It seems my hands know what I like even as my brain tries to use different sizes for different results.

I'm a 2.5 mm needles for sock sort of person, and now I also am a short needles sort of sock person. Just another step in the evolution of a knitter.