Knitting Needles
There’s been quite a bit of talk lately about the new knitpicks interchangeable needle system, and while I don’t plan on ordering myself a set anytime soon, I did have some things to day about the Boye Needlemaster and Denise sets.
First let’s start off with price. Here in Calgary, the Needlemaster is priced at $99 at Michaels. If you use that 40% off coupon that comes every week, you’re paying around sixty bucks. I paid $75 for my Denise set, but that was full price, no coupon. (Purchased at the Beehive.) I know I could have gotten it for less online, but I wanted to support whichever LYS was willing to carry the set. (I don’t know if anyone else here carries the Denise set, but I know that at the time Gina Brown’s did not, and when I did call them to ask, they had no idea what I was talking about when I said “Denise needle set.”)
The needles seem to come in the common sizes. I know people gripe about the Denise needles not going down small enough in size, but what’s a few extra dollars to buy some smaller addis? I’ve never had a problem with the size offerings on either set.
The joins. This is where the comparison takes a turn. The joins and cords are vastly different. Denise joins are clicky snappy. The cords are soft and flexible. I know*everyone* likes to claim that their cords are flexible, but there are different kinds of flexible. Denise flexible is like a rubbery hollow straw, whereas Boye Needlemaster flexible is stiff. Stiff like Susan Bates circulars. Sure they bend so you can call them flexible, but they don’t like to bend into new shapes. The joins on the Boye set are, as I’m sure you’ve already read somewhere other than here, screw-on. They give you these little pin key things to stick in the shaft to help you with tightening, and for the most part these hold okay… I do have to say that my joins tend to come loose because (I think) of the stiffness in the cord. There’s wrist movement in knitting, and I think that when I knit I tend to loosen my joins. It’s a pain in the butt to re-place (not replace!) a strand of yarn that has fallen into the crack/gap thing that just seems to get larger as I knit more.
Then there are the needle tips themselves. People seem to really dislike the plastic heads that Denise uses. I thought they were awkward at first, but have since grown to enjoy them. I like the lightweightedness and the non-clickeyness of the Denise needle points. I like that they aren’t so sharp that I develop a callous from touching the tips while knitting. I also like that they are sharper than my Addis. The Needlemaster tips are metal. Each size is a different color and one thing that pisses me off is that Boye has not bothered to either stamp or etch needle sizes on their shafts. They’ve got needle sizes labeled on the carry case, but if you have more than one project on the needles at one time, using needles that are close in size, you have no choice but to hunt down a needle size thingy. The least they could have done was color code the parking stalls in the case so I’d know which needles go where! Or they could have included a build in needle size measurey thing. Of course size is really irrelevant, as long as you’re hitting gauge, but really – when storing my needles I’d like to make sure they’re stored in the right order.
So all in all, I prefer my Denise needles over my Needlemaster. Don’t get me wrong though, I still use the Needlemaster. It’s just that when starting a new project, I always reach for Denise first.
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