Which is better: Traditional or Circular knitting needles???

Discover the benefits of circular knitting needles, an innovative tool that will allow you to create knitting projects more easily and quickly. Follow Learn with Alicja, expert teacher and knitter, on a journey to discover these techniques, ideal for both beginners and experts.

When I moved to Italy, way back in 1999, I noticed with amazement that Italian women used long needles to knit.

Even the way of working was different from what I knew. A needle had to be held under the right arm to free the right hand from wrapping the ball of thread around the needle. That technique, called traditional in Italy, seemed a bit tiring to me.

At that time there was a strange, for me, belief that circular needles were used exclusively for making necks.

One day I went into a haberdashery and asked for circular needles with long cables. Do you know what the clerk told me?

– Ma’am, circular needles with long cables don’t exist. The cable is short because these needles are only used for making necks.

I was very perplexed. I tried to explain that it wasn’t true, that with circular needles it was possible to do much more. The sales assistant wasn’t interested in my explanations, convinced that I was a foreign customer with little experience who understood very little about knitting.

I started teaching the continental technique and the use of circular needles by pure chance. One day I spoke to a woman who, after having been operated on (she had breast cancer), had to completely give up irons because she could no longer hold an iron under her right arm. She was truly sorry.

I offered her knitting lessons with circular needles and the continental technique.

It happened more than 20 years ago, but I remember to this day the joy I saw on her face when she rediscovered, again, her passion for her.

– You changed my life, thank you! – These words of hers remained in my heart.

I know how important it is to have a passion in life.

Today, even if the situation is different, because it is now known that it is more convenient to work with circular needles, some people continue to use long needles.

Why? I couldn’t say…

Some have tried and given up because working with the continental technique seems more difficult at first. It’s just an impression, because everything we know how to do seems easy to us, everything we don’t know how to do seems difficult to us. Do you agree?

It takes a bit of perseverance and you also have to accept the fact that you find yourself in the shoes of a beginner again… This, perhaps, is the most difficult obstacle to accept.

If you are part of this group, I want to invite you to accompany me into the world of knitting made with circular needles.

Maybe in this short video, you will find something that will convince you 🙂

Next week I will present you 2 video lessons, in which I will teach how to work straight magic, both with the traditional technique and with the continental technique.

See you soon

Alicja Kwartnik for Hircus Filati

P.S. I forgot… on the Hircus Filati website you can have free access to my course on the continental technique and the use of circular needles.