I’m very novice when it comes to knitting. Mostly small projects with needles that have the stopper on them. Interested in using circular needles or double pointed but scared work will fall off. My main question is: does anyone know of directions for using circular needles? Is it the same as knitting with the stoppers? I’m ready to go beyond squares and rectanlges. I want a hat etc, etc, etc. Any help in the right direction would be great. Also if you know of a good brand of circular needles that would also be helpful.
You might want to take a look at the videos for circular knitting on this page. There are a variety of methods, for large diameter (something like the body of a sweater) and small diameter (something like a sock, mitten, or sleeve).
The process of making the knit and purl stitches is the same with circular needles as it is with straight needles. The big difference is that you are knitting around and around, never turning your work to the ‘wrong side’. Therefore every row is a right side row. You also might be interested to know that knitting every stitch of every round, when working circularly, produces stockinette stitch, whereas on straight needles you have to knit one row, purl one row, etc., in order to produce stockinette. So in the round, it’s a nice treat for those of us who are not so fond of purling!
As for brand of circular needles, a lot of us here have interchangeable sets where the kit has cables and needle tips seperate and you can use any of the needle sizes with any of the cable lengths. You can find discussion at great length in this thread.
Also know that you can knit flat with circulars too. They’d be like the flexible ones with stoppers only they’re connected. But you knit with them like you would straight needles.
I don’t have problems with knitting falling off of circular needles. It’s less likely to be a problem with circs than straight needles in my experience. You can use the stoppers on circs or just wind a rubber band around the tip of the needles. I got tired of losing the stoppers so I just starting using the rubber bands.
Double pointed needles carry more of a risk of the knitting falling off but there is no need to use dpns at all. You can use 2 circs to knit anything that calls for dpns like socks. If you look down on the page KnitQueen gave you to Small Diameter Circular Knitting it describes how to use 2 circs instead of dpns.