If the needle slides in smoothly and sits snugly in the hole, then you’ve just identified your needle size. Mystery solved!

That, of course, does not explain the conundrum of the US needle sizes. Why don’t they follow the Imperial system? To be quite honest, nobody really knows! It remains a fact, however, that from around 1900 US manufacturers started selling their own needle gauges – following no system at all. Or rather, the actual sizes followed (more or less) the Imperial system but the numbers were rising, much like the metric system popular in mainland Europe. To help you decipher the world of knitting needle sizes, refer to the charts below! Knitting Needle Sizes Chart for US and UK A handy little guide to knitting needle sizes including size chart for US, European, and Japanese needles.So in some parts, this chart is only an approximation. Still, you can easily see that a 4 mm knitting needle converts to a U.S. size 6. And knitting needles sold as 5 mm in Europe can be found as size 8 on the other side of the Atlantic. Knitting needle sizes explained Now, you might be wondering about the difference between knitting needle sizes? Why are there so many and which size should you use? What’s the difference? Well, depending on your yarn weight, you will need a different needle with a different diameter to create an attractive fabric! This can be an incredibly complicated topic or super simple. So, let’s go through the details step-by-step. Close-up shot of a typical commercial yarn label If you look at Miss Lambert’s “ My knitting book” from 1845, you will find her marketing a “ Standard Filière” that bears a strong resemblance to the wire gauges used in the British industry at that time and follow the same systemization. Other authors, such as Hope, Mee, and Gaugain also advertised their own needle gauges. And this explains why the smallest knitting needles have the largest numbers in the UK. Source: Miss Lambert, My Knitting book; London, 1845, John Murray

Given the many immigrants (but also the rising economic power) from Germany, this mixture cannot be seen as all that surprising from a certain point of view – especially as it feels a little bit more intuitive that a larger number constitutes a larger size. It would be very limited to assume the U.S. only imported haberdashery from the UK. After all, companies like addi have been selling fine knitting needles since 1829! So, your first step should always, I repeat, always be knitting a gauge swatch to confirm you are knitting a satisfying fabric in line with your thoughts or the requirements of your pattern. what size knitting needles for beginnersOn top of that, different materials (e.g. wool, alpaca, or cotton) are also an important factor. Some of these might change their appearance drastically after the first wash. Again, please understand that these are only general recommendations. Two different companies might call their yarn DK weight but that doesn’t mean that both should be knitted with needle size 6 for the best results. Does knitting needle length matter?

Explaining U.S. knitting needle sizes is a complicated topic and we have to delve a bit into history: With the popularization of knitting in the UK in the 18th century and the industrialization, the shift from handmade tools to mass-produced steel needles occurred. Needles were often also called wires because, by then, most dpns were indeed made out of durable steel wire. And thus they were measured in accordance with the standard wire gauge (SWG).

Japanese Needle Size Chart

A pattern typically only provides you with a size, aka the diameter of the needle. The rest is up to your own preference. Your knitting needles need to be long enough to accommodate all stitches without them being squeezed together so tightly that they fall off whenever you relax. The knitting stitch pattern: Typically, you will knit lace patterns using relatively large needles to create a lace like appearanges. Rib stitches, on the other hand, will benefit from using relatively small knitting needles. Unlike Swiss cheese, these holes are precisely sized for measuring knitting needles! This is a standard plastic gauge for measuring knitting needle sizes. In the US, needle sizes start at 0 and increase to 50. However, in the UK, sizes start at 14 and go up to 000.

Susan Webster concludes in a noteworthy post that “then, somehow, magically, around the time of World War II, needle and gauge markers united around the “Standard American” size”. She argues that it could be a result of wartime restrictions. Decades of confusion among knitters might have elevated that demand. Knitting needle sizes can be confusing. That’s because different countries have different ways of numbering their knitting needles. If you have knitting needles from all over the world or of unknown origins, your best bet for identifying their size is by using a knitting gauge.For circular knitting needles, the distinction is mainly a matter of preference. The longer the needle body, the more you can use the needles as leverage but the heavier they are. And of course, whenever you are knitting in the round, the stiff length of the needle itself defines the minimum diameter you can knit with these comfortably – except you are using the magic loop technique (e.g. you cannot knit a 10-inch circle with needles that are 4 in long each). How are knitting needles sized – a short history Your personal tension: Are you a tight or loose knitter? Your knitting style and even the needle material (wood vs metal) will have a huge influence on your gauge. Of course, new materials (like celluloid) might also explain the departure from the SWG (as they required different machines and thus resulted in different sized needles). One also has to keep in mind that around 1910, commercial flights across the Atlantic were not available, and neither were telephone calls possible. Unlike today, knitters around the world were much less connected internationally and the world moved much slower and still a bit in isolation. These days, I see an increasing switch among U.S. pattern designers to the metric system for similar reasons. Since the Imperial and the U.S. knitting needle size system still exist side by side, recommending size 6 needles can be very confusing as knitters from both sides of the pond are likely to buy a given pattern. In Japan, knitting needles use different standard metric sizes, starting at 2.1 mm and going up to 25 mm. What is My Knitting Needle Size?