Circular Needles  Cable Stitch Needles  Gauge Circular needles are not created as a full circle. They are two needles connected by a nylon fiber cord.  They allow a larger circular garment, such as a large sweater, to be worked as a seamless product. The  connector cord will hold many stitches, without the bulk that would normally occur when using double  pointed needles. They also come in handy when transporting your unfinished items, as the stitches  won’t fall off the needles as easily. Circular needles can also be used to make large blankets, which  would otherwise need to be completed in sections and then sewn together. The circular needles allow a  great number of stitches to be cast on. The item can then be knitted back and forth in much the same  manner as flat needles.  Cable stitch needles have a curved section in them, so the stitches can settle in the indentation as cable  stitch is worked. The stitches need to be moved from side to side when working cables. The indentation  allows easy identification of the stitches being manipulated to produce the cables. When knitting a garment, it is immensely helpful to know from the onset whether the finished item will  fit. This is where gauge comes in. To check for gauge, a swatch is knitted to predict the size of your  knitted item. Generally, you work a swatch that is 10 stitches long and 10 rows high. The swatch can be  placed on a flat surface and measured to see how many stitches equal one inch. Multiply the number of  stitches in an inch is by the number of inches needed to estimate how many stitches need to be cast on.  For example, if gauge measures four stitches per inch, and your garment needs to be 25 inches, you will  need to cast on 100 stitches.  This will avoid the disappointment of finishing a garment, only to have it not fit as intended. With  garment patterns, especially sweaters, the stitch count can be crucial to the pattern design. The needle  size can be adjusted so that the swatch test results comply with those specified in the pattern. Moving  to larger or smaller sized needles would adjust the stitch size without making complicated adjustments  to the pattern instructions.  6