On circular needles

I've noticed that a lot of US knitting patterns seems to use circular needles. Like, a LOT. One of the things people seem to like about knitting garments in the round is that there's hardly any finishing involved - no side-seams to stitch up or anything. 

On the other hand, it kind of feels a bit cheaty to knit in the round to avoid finishing. I don't really know why. I just seem to have conceived a distate for circular-needle-knitting. It's mainly to do with not wanting to end up buying more and more equipment - circular needles don't only have a gauge but a length (they could be 40cm, 60cm, 80cm, 100cm) so you could end up with zillions of needles. This pattern for example wants two lengths of 3.5mm gauge needles. Or look at this tank top. It's great (although well beyond my capabilities - intarsia and fairisle? I don't think so) but uses two lengths of circular needles in the same gauge again, plus another one. And it's not even to avoid finishing, as front and back are separate pieces put together with side seams and shoulder seams. 

Either I will have to start buying more and more circular needles (which are an absolute bastard to store incidentally) or I will have to resign myself to not trying any of the really cool free patterns on US sites. 

What's wrong with straight needles anyway? 

Learn mattress stitch. Really.

So I got a new acrylic cheapo yarn in the pound shop, this time at £2.50 a ball. (I know, a bit of an investment.) 

And as the weather has turned autumnal I decided to use it for long wristwarmers. Didn't take long - a couple of evenings each hand. This is the result, and I like them. I shaped them into the wrist slightly with k2tog, and then out again for the hand a bit with m1, so they fit quite snugly. 

In fact today I finished them,  and in order to wear them for the first time - to the supermarket - I went and changed three times to find an outfit that worked around the slightly garish pink shade. (Usually it only takes me two changes of clothes to decide what to wear to Sainsbury's (one in the case of Tesco's))

I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, because first I spent a an hour finishing them this morning (whilst watching Antiques Roadshow). There's a reason it took so long. Unfortunately I decided to put into practice this fabled 'mattress stitch' for the seam. The reason this was unfortunate was that I only decided to use it when I got to the second one, not the first. 

Once I had done this mattress stitch seam I realised what everyone had been going on about. Turns out that it's makes a really neat almost-invisible seam. As you can see at the top of this picture. Compare with the bottom, which is the hand I finished first, with just an any-old-sewn-up-seam. Oops. 

Obviously I then had to unpick the first crappy seam and re-do it properly with mattress stitch. Eventually I had a pair, both neatly seamed with mattress stitch. Nice. 

Moral of the story: believe what all the books and websites say about mattress stitch. It really is easy, and it really is worth learning. And a good finish really does make all the difference to a project. 

Now I just need to decide whether to go for a matching hat or a matching scarf.