Knitting Needle Storage and Upgrades

Sunday, February 13, 2022

As part of the most recent obsession with knitting, I've decided to actually organize my knitting needles and crochet hooks. Originally, they were just thrown in a basket in their original packaging, which meant I had to did through everything to find what I was looking for. Nowadays, there's a bunch of pretty good knitting needle cases available, particularly for the interchangeable knitting needles. Shown above is the KnitPicks Interchangeable Embossed Needle Case in Caspian and the ChiaoGoo Case for 5" Interchangeables.

The KnitPicks case works well for the nickel-plated KnitPicks Options needles I've picked up over time. The set is filled out by a KnittersPride Karbonz Interchangeable in US2.5, KnittersPride Nova Platina Interchangeable in US3, and KnittersPride Mindful Collection Lace Stainless Steel Interchangeable in US5. I bought a couple recently to fill out the holes in the collection, to give some added variety in the needle shape, and to grab some of the smaller sizes that I use most (KnitPicks doesn't have interchangeable US2.5 or US3!).

Flip the interchangeable knitting needle page over, and there's another for a second set of interchangeables or...for your grab bag crochet hook collection.

The case also has two genersouly-sizes pockets to hold the spare cables, notions, etc. Pretty handy!

With all the baby-sized knitting I've been doing recently, I realized that (1) I use smaller knitting needle sizes a lot, (2) my gauge is super loose, so I'm always using smaller needles than recommended with the yarn, and (3) nickel-plated needles are slippery! So this is how I ended up first acquiring the ChiaoGoo Twist 5 inch Mini Interchangeable Knitting Set with sizes US000 - US1.5. With this set, I have some teensy tinsy interchangeable knitting needles now. And then I absolutely fell in love with the memory-less red-coated steel cables on this set. So then I went and upgraded my larger set with the ChiaoGoo Spin 5" Bamboo Interchangeable Knitting Set - Small with sizes US2 - US8. Bamboo is considerably grabbier than nickel. While the spin set comes with Swivel cables, I also bought a couple of the red-coated steel cables for this bamboo set, and adapters to convert the teensy Mini cables to the somewhat larger "Small" needles. Overall, I'm really enjoying these new sets, and the case to hold them all. I removed the seam between the US13 and US15 labeled pockets in the case that came with the bamboo set, and I was able to slide the teensy Mini set right in there. So, all the ChiaoGoo pieces are now in the same kit!