A few nights ago I got to the point on my Diagonal Stitch Cardigan, knitting toward the cuff of the sleeves, where the tube got so small that it was too awkward and slow to use Denise circs to knit them. Once it was no longer possible to knit in the round I had changed to the magic loop method. But the thing I love about Denise needes – the thicker cable that doesn’t allow stitches to tighten up and become harder to push onto the needle part – also makes magic loop a bit slow and inclined to produce a ladder where the loop is positioned.

It would be much faster and easier to just change to dpns, but I didn’t have any in that size. Am I the only one who, faced with trying to buy even simple knitting tools like needles, cringes as the illusion that I’m part of a great global shopping community crumbles into a reality of high US postal charges and limited local availablity?

So I started searching. Metal needles make my hands hurt, so a trip to Lindcraft or Spotlight was out. While I like bamboo, I know my gauge can be a bit different between bamboo and plastic, so it would be better to get the latter to match the Denise needles. That meant ordering online, and rather than have just one set of needles sent to me I may as well get a few sets to match the Denise needles I used most often.

That meant an internet search. I googled. I visited Aussie yarn shop sites. I checked the manufacturers sites. I ground my teeth. Why? Metal, wood and bamboo needles everywhere. The only ‘plastic’ needles I could find were Swallow caesin. Now, caesin is fine with me. After all, Swallow is an Aussie company and I like to support local manufacturers. Trouble is, I then couldn’t find a good range of sizes in dpns at a single shop.

So I went to the Swallow site, to their ‘where to buy’ page. And most of the Australian shops listed no longer had Swallow needles available. Lots of Knitpicks Options, however.

I had another option in mind, however. Perhaps if I bought a second set of all the different size needle tips of the Denise set I could use the 2 circs method. So repeated my search and found that no shops in Australia sold the needles separately – which isn’t too surprising, actually. But what disturbed me was that many of the shops listed on the Denise ‘where to buy’ page, like the Swallow page, didn’t list the Denise sets at all. Just lots of Knitpicks Options.

At this point I sat back and wondered if I was seeing a pattern. Knitpicks Options are the latest thing. If the market wants Options that’s what they’ll get. And if (from what I’ve read on Ravelry) shops have trouble ordering Swallow needles from the company then it’s no surprise if they become hard to find.

It’s ironic that Knitpicks, who won’t ship their yarn to Australia, may end up dominating the needle market here so completely that a local product, and a rsi-friendly alternative, no longer become available. If the popularity of Options ever diminishes, will the other companies return or will they have been forced to shut up shop in the meantime? Maybe it’s a good thing Knitpicks don’t ship their yarn here. It’s possible we might lose Bendigo Woollen Mills or other local yarn manufacturers, something I’d hate to see.

Anyway, I found I could buy Denise needle tips from the Denise site, but it may end up costing as much as a whole set. So I may as well buy another set. Just out of curiosity I popped into ebay to see if any of those multitudes of knitters buying Knitpicks Options might be offloading their Denise sets. There was one set, which I bid on but lost. There was also a pile of Swallow dpns up for auction in the US, which I bid on and won.

So the second ironic moment of this whole needle hunting saga is that I had to go to the US, via ebay, to find me the Aussie-made needles I need. They’re going to be well travelled needles.