Most knitters learn to knit on straight needles. These are also the type of needles you typically see in movies and tv when a character is knitting. For most of the history of knitting, they were the most common option.
Nowadays, many of us knitters have transitioned to using circular knitting needles exclusively. That’s the case for me even when knitting flat items like a blanket, but you don’t have to do the same. In fact, you can keep using straight needles for a large variety of knitting projects.
There are, however, some factors that end up making it kind of difficult to knit a large blanket on straight needles. Let’s explore those challenges and then evaluate three possible solutions.
Why Knitting a Blanket on Straight Needles can be Challenging
Think of your knitting needle like a lever. Your hand and wrist operates as the fulcrum for that lever. If you evenly balance the fulcrum in the middle of a lever, it evenly distributes the weight along the lever. On the other hand, if the fulcrum is far over to one side of the lever, then a small amount of weight on the other end can have a significant amount of force.
That’s what happens with your straight needles. A small amount of yarn weight on the far end of your knitting needles exerts an outsized amount of force on your hands and wrists. This isn’t such a big deal for smaller projects with narrow widths like a dishcloth or a scarf.
When you start widening your projects into garments and blankets, though, things change. The amount of force from the weight of these larger projects on your needles can become really uncomfortable. In extreme situations, it can even cause repetitive stress injuries.
Straight needles also have a relatively limited amount of space on them to hold your stitches. The longest straight needles I’ve ever used were 14″ (35.5 cm). They were getting pretty unwieldy at that length, but they will weren’t wide enough to hold all the stitches for a twin-sized blanket at one time. It can make a knit blanket project pretty uncomfortable to work on if not downright impossible.
Faced with these two issues, a lot of knitters just opt to use circulars. That may not be your preference, though, or you may not have a pair of circular needles available. If that’s the case, what’s a knitter to do?
Well, there are three common options. Let’s take a look at them.
Option 1: Knit a Smaller Blanket on Longer Needles
Your first option is to knit a smaller blanket on the longest straight knitting needles you can find. That project I mentioned above on 14″ straights? It was a baby blanket. While larger blankets can be hard to knit in one piece on straight needles, a small blanket can still work.
Knitting a baby blanket or lap blanket can be a great first blanket project for new knitters. It allows you to get used to working on a larger project but doesn’t require you to change your needles. You can also wear lap blankets around the shoulders, so they are fairly versatile.
If you choose to go this route, I would recommend using yarn that’s no thicker than a DK yarn or worsted weight yarn. If you go with a chunky yarn, you’ll be working with a larger needle size. That larger needle will require you to make more exaggerated motions with each stitch. That will in turn aggravate the amount of force applied to your hands and wrists by the weight of the yarn on your needles.
Remember to take regular breaks to rest your wrists and stretch. You don’t want to overwork them with heavy yarn on the needles. This isn’t a race and you’ll have a lot of stitches on your needles. Give yourself time to take care of your body.
Now, if you really want to knit a chunky blanket with thicker yarn, I’d strongly recommend using circular needles, but the next two options might still be helpful for you.
Option 2: Knit Your Blanket in Strips and Seam Together
Let’s say you want to knit different sizes of blankets, maybe something a grown adult could really snuggle up under (or maybe even two). At this point, no matter what you do, the size of the blanket is just going to be too big for straight needles. Luckily, you don’t have to knit the entire blanket at once.
Instead, you can use a blanket pattern that is meant to to be knit in narrower strips. This is a popular, traditional form of construction that you’ll often see in heavily cabled, Aran-style blanket patterns. The hand knit blankets will be knit in several long strips, usually about as wide as one or two motifs. When you’re done knitting the strips, you can use seaming or crochet to join strips together into a large blanket.
In other words, you are essentially knitting a series of scarves. When you put them all together, they transform into a throw blanket or even something big enough to cover a king-sized bed. It’s a remarkably efficient way to get things done.
Now, the drawback here is obvious: you need to join the strips together somehow. If you don’t like seaming, can’t find your darning needle or crochet hook, or are running short on time, this process might not be the right fit for you. But don’t worry! I still have one more idea.
Option 3: Knit a Modular Blanket and Join as You Go
I love blankets knit in small modules that are joined as you go. If you’ve been here a while, you’ve probably seen my mitered square blanket. I’ve been working on it for over two years now. Although I’m knitting mine with circular needles, you could easily knit it with straight needles, too. This modular method is also popular for log cabin blankets.
Essentially, what happens with these types of blankets is that you start by knitting a square. When the first square is finished, you pick up and knit stitches along one side of that square. Then you start the next square. Each square builds off of a previous square or two. Eventually, you have an entire blanket without having to sew seams.
If you’ve seen a knit blanket with bold colorblock squares and wondered how they did it, this is is probably the technique they used. It’s also a great way to adjust blanket size easily.
This construction method is a popular choice for those who don’t want to seam pieces together but want to knit a blanket that’s larger thank a lap blanket. The drawback is that this method is probably going to leave you with the most loose ends to weave in. It also may be more challenging for a beginner knitter. That’s because your work will bunch in your hands when you pick up stitches for new squares, and that can feel strange or unsettling.
When I’m working mitered square blankets, I like to use a special cast-on to make it easier to pick up stitches along the edges of my squares. The crochet cast-on is a great way to get edges that make it easy to pick up stitches and also match the slip-stitch edge along the other sides of your squares.
A Few Last Tips and Tricks for Knitting Blankets on Straight Needles
As with so many things in knitting, finding the method that works best for you is, in large part, a matter of personal preferences. You need to think about what you do and don’t enjoy doing while knitting. Consider what works best with your lifestyle and knitting goals. Ask yourself whether you have the right tools to achieve the goal you’re looking for.
If you’d like to learn more about knitting a blanket on circular needles, I’ve written a beginner guide that will walk you through that process.
If you want to understand more about which fiber content would make the best blanket for you, I’ve also got a guide to the best yarn for blankets. Spoiler alert: you’ll probably want to use different types of yarn depending on what kind of blanket you’re making and who you’re making it for.
And finally, remember that your knitting journey is your own, and none of these are hard and fast rules. If you find systems that work for you, help you achieve the finished object you’d envisioned, and don’t cause you pain, then it’s fine to keep going that way. Each knitting pattern is less of a baking recipe where you have to follow everything exactly right and more like a cooking recipe where you have some freedom. Feel free to increase the amount of garlic at will.
Thank you….justcwhat I needed
I’m glad to hear it was helpful!