Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Swaving with straight needles


Many modern DPN fail when bent for swaving.  Can one swave with straight needles?

Well, no! Swaving requires the needles to rotate for the tip to produce an arc of motion.  When a straight needle rotates, its tip stays in one place and there is no tip motion to make the stitch.

With a flexible needle, the knitter can flex the needle and use the resulting bend to rotate the needle. This made me think that I was swaving with straight needles, when in fact I was swaving with curved needles.


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