When you knit 365 days of the year you deserve some special tools for the job – at least that’s what I’m currently telling myself in order to justify spending a small fortune on rosewood knitting needles.

They are worth it though. Over the years I’ve knitted with metal needles, then bamboo, birch, casein and finally found the pinnacle of needles (in my opinion) – rosewood. I still love my swallow casein needles when knitting with wool / alpaca because their rounded smooth tips deal excellently with any loosely plied yarn (whereas a sharp pointed tip tends to encourage yarn splitting and lots of cursing!). The rosewood needles on the other hand are perfect when knitting tightly plied yarns, especially 4 ply cottons. They’re light, strong and pointy tipped – everything I need to get neat, even stitches, and because the wood is dense and strong they come in the really slim sizes that I like – every increment between 2mm and 3mm. I’m a tight knitter and so have had my fair share of snapped needles and frayed tips in the past but so far these rosewoods are standing up to the job beautifully.

Whilst I was adding the needles to my basket over at Purlescence I thought I might as well go the whole hog and throw in a beautifully made Sunflower swift and a superbly useful Namaste bag buddy. The bag buddy has magnetic sides and so keeps all your wool needles and scissors safe and the swift – well, I’m wondering how I ever managed to do without one. It’s beautiful and works like a dream. Amy is quite pleased too as it means that she’s let off skein holding duties!

It really felt like Christmas the day this lot arrived!

By the way, do you like my knitting needle holder? Made by my friend Kate as a pencil roll for Amy and pinched by me when the pencils were reduced to stubs. It makes a change for me to liberate something of Amy’s – usually it’s the other way round!