Needles in a haystack

If you were to stick my hands into a hay stack and have me knit like that, then that's how I feel like when I knit on DPNS. Dozens of little tiny sticks constantly poke me while I try to make one single stitch. I realize, that at most, there's really only 5 needles, but with the way they cross and - I swear - tangle with eachother, it might as well be a dozen. If I haven't mentioned it before, I hate double pointed needles with a firey raging passion. The first pair of socks I ever learned, I learned to do on magic loop because I hate DPNs that much.

I was reminded of my passion about DPNs today, when I tried to finish a finger on the celtic knot gloves. Needless to say, I didn't make it through one finger. The poor gloves have been languishing at the bottom of my knitting bag for a reason, I hate hate hate DPNs. It's not even their fault, I had the brilliant idea of adding half fingers to a fingerless glove pattern. Perhaps it's the tiny amount of stitches on tiny yarn that I attempt to do in the round, that make DPNs so difficult. But is it really necessary for one needle holding a mere 4 stitches of fingering weight yarn to twist around completely and then tangle with another needle while I try to knit stitches on the opposite side of the finger? Really? Really?

Suddenly, I understand why people knit completely fingerless gloves. I ripped out the half finger I'd made and then proceeded to rip out the one complete half finger remaining on the glove. The glove is now happily finished, thumb gusset and all, patiently waiting for me to weave in the ends. I don't know why it never occured to me to try knitting the fingers on magic loop. I might not have such a passionate loathing against DPNs if I had thought of trying magic loop first. I've even started on the second glove, with the lovely wooden harmony circs. So perhaps I will have a second pair of fingerless gloves before winter ends.

I've also noticed that the cable on knitpicks needle is 100X better than the cable on my addis. The addi's I have get kinks in the cable, and acquire a certain amount of twist to them after I've used them for a month or so at a time. I can relax the addi cable again with a dip in boiling water, but I haven't had any problems with the knitpicks cable at all. I'm a convert. I may start slowly collecting every needle size Knitpicks has to offer.