Want to knit a sweater with straight needles but the pattern says you need a circular needle for the neck? Don’t sweat it! Here’s an easy way to knit the neck with 2 needles instead.
Only Seam One Shoulder
The key step is not to join the front and back at both sides – leave one side open.
Most sweater patterns for straight needles are knit in 4 pieces: a front, back and 2 sleeves. Then you seam the front and back together, attach your sleeves & finally add a neckband to finish.
Pattern assembly instructions often start by seaming the front and back together at the top.
But once you seam the 2nd shoulder, your garment suddenly has a hole for the neck opening, and the only way to knit around this is to use a circular needle or set of double pointed needles (DPNs) from then on.
But if you don’t seam 1 shoulder and leave it open, the top of your garment is still 1 long piece, with your neckline stitches surrounded by shoulder stitches at each end. You can still pick up and knit stitches along this fairly flat long edge with 2 straight needles – hooray!
Full Step by Step Instructions
- Follow your garment pattern until the assembly instructions where you join the front and back together.
- Just join one shoulder instead of both. So the top of your garment is now one long piece, with your shoulder stitches at both ends and your just seamed shoulder stitches in the middle.
- Go to the neckband instructions part of your pattern.
- Skipping the shoulder stitches at the start and end of your long piece, work along the top edge picking up the required number of neckband stitches on to your straight knitting needle.
- Knit the required number of neck rows as per your pattern, by knitting back and forth in rows instead of working in rounds. If it’s a ribbed neck, rows are the same stitches as rounds. But if it’s a rolled neck in stockinette, you will need to purl the wrong side rows instead of knitting every row in the round.
- Bind off as per instructions leaving a long tail. Seam your 2 neck edges with mattress stitch to complete your neckband.
- Resume your pattern, join the 2nd shoulder and follow the rest of the assembly instructions.
Fun fact: circular knitting needles are a relatively modern invention, so this was the standard way of knitting neckbands in older patterns.
It can be hard enough to find nice sweater patterns you can knit with straight needles these days, so don’t be put off if it says you still need a circular needle too. Just follow these 7 steps for a straight needle neckline instead.
But as a circular knitting needle convert myself, circular needles come in very handy and are much easier on my wrists too. You can still knit back and forth in rows on a circular as well as knitting in the round!