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In today’s post I will be reviewing;
Knit Picks: Options; Sunstruck Wood. Interchangeable circular knitting needles
Knit Picks: Sunstruck; Options. Interchangeable Circular Knitting Needles
Product Details
- Manufacturer/Brand; Knit Picks: Options; Sunstruck wood
- Item number: 90613
- RRP at time of writing: $84.99
Contents
- Needles: These are the sizes in US measurements and mm rather than the old UK sizing but there are lots of charts that will convert the numbers for you
- UK: 3.50, 3.75, 4.00, 5.00, 5.50, 6.00, 6.50, 8.00
- US: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10.5, 11
- Cables: 2 each of the following sizes; 24″ (60 cm), 32″ (80 cm)
- End Caps: 8.
- Cable keys: 2
The case they come in can be used to store the needles and has a separate pocket style case, for the cables and end caps. This smaller case will easily fit inside the main one and there are plenty of extra pockets in the walls of the case, to add extra needles as you collect them over time.
Knit Picks: Sunstruck; Options. Interchangeable Circular Knitting Needles
Reason For Buying
I find metal needles too cold and because of RSI issues this makes my hands lock up. Plastic needles gave too much drag with the yarn, so the search began for wooden needles. I have enjoyed knitting with light coloured birch wood needles (straight ones) in the past but REALLY wanted to get an interchangeable set of cirular needles.
Circulars were a good plan because the weight of the project is in your lap, rather than on the needles but all the ones available in the UK were bright swirling colours (Harmonies/Symfonies depending on the branding). These too were unsuitable because of vision issues, which makes bright colours strobe like optical illusions.
I continued my search and found these Options in Sunstruck wood, on the Knit Picks website and fell in love with them.
Pros/Cons
Pros
- Birch wood
- Light coloured, no more optical illusions from multi-coloured laminates
- Smooth finish to wood and metal joints
- The metal connectors between needle and cable are super smooth and because they are in constant contact with your hand, warm up and have given me none of the chilling factor that I get from metal needles.
- Versatility. Wide range of sizes to cover many yarn types. You can also get cable connectors seperatly that will join more than one cable to another, to add even more length options, if you need to.
- End caps, so you can take the needles off when you travel or to store a project.
- The needles are small in size which makes them easy to store.
- Very light and comfortable to use
Cons
At the time of writing I have found no suppliers or importers are bringing them into the UK 
Knit Picks only deliver to USA and Canada. It was only because someone I knew was going on a trip to the USA that I was able to get these. {You know who you are and that I am eternally grateful}.
Build Quality
Fantastic. The needles are superbly finished, totally smooth wood. They feel silky in the hand without having a high gloss finish that could be distracting. To describe the colouring, I’d call them standard birch colour with visible but not raised ginger in the grain.
Value for Money
Excellent. If you are lucky and live in the places they are delivered to, you have the option of buying individual needles so you can try them out to see if you like them before you get the whole set. That option also means that should you suffer any breakages you could get extra ones. I love the full set as all the sizes are so useful, now I can choose whatever yarn I fancy rather than having to remember which needles I have and only buy yarn that I could use with those.
Would I buy it Again?
YES YES YES. I desperately want to get another set as I’ve got on so well with these. I haven’t got the hang of magic loop and prefer to use the two circulars method for smaller projects.
Summing up
I know I was in love with my Brittany needles and if you want a comparison for coloring and smoothness these would be very similar. I ADORE these Options in the Sunstruck wood, because of the type of dyslexia that I have the highly coloured woods of Symfonies/Harmonies were never going to work for me. Also because there is such low light here in the winter or if you knit in the evening, the lighter coloured wood is so much easier to see to knit with.
Each needles is 4.5″ in length and the sizing listed on the cable is the final length with the needles attached to the cable.
These needles have been pure joy to knit with, so far I have used them with acrylic yarn and half acrylic / half wool both of which have been wonderful with no negatives. Fantastic with cotton which is another favorite material.
An important point also, is that although they are intended for circular knitting because of the cable styles, there is no reason why you can’t do regular straight knitting on them. Instead of joining the work in the round, when you get to the end of the row, pass the needle to the other hand just as you would with straight pins and continue knitting. If you wanted to, because you have two of each of the cables you could attach one cable to the needle and add a cap to the other end of the cable if you still want to preserve totally separate needles for each hand.
Knit Picks: Options Sunstruck Wood. Needle attached to cable & end-cap
Links
Please, please Knit Picks send these to UK importers. UK importers of Knit Picks, please bring these to the UK – they are amazing. I ain’t too proud to beg
Horray! Found a supplier that will ship to the UK. Check out Happy Knits from Portland OR
Best wishes and thanks for reading, see you soon
Billie 
PS: Another option for lighter coloured needles that are available as fixed circulars are Knit Pro Basix. These are also pale in colour but so far they have only been available as fixed length circulars not interchangeable needles.
