Are your knitting needles too pointy or not pointy enough?

I recently had a conversation with some fellow shop owners about whether your knitting needles can be too pointy. Several of them said, "the pointier the better!" But I disagree. I want to share my thoughts about this with you and I have some specific examples to share below as well. 

Project number one - too pointy! I am in the process of knitting a pair of socks on size US 1 needles. I'm using the Magic Loop method and had chosen my usual ChiaoGoo bamboo needles for this project. But I found myself struggling a bit and not wanting to pick up these socks to work on. It took me a bit to realize that the problem was that my needles were too pointy. "Sunni," (you might be saying) "how can your needles be too pointy?!" The thing is that I'm using an alpaca blend sock yarn from The Fibre Co. called Amble.

It's a lovely yarn in a wonderful acid green color but there are a couple of things that made this yarn not work with my regular needle choice. First, the Alpaca makes this yarn a little bit fuzzy. Second, this yarn is not tightly twisted. The combination of those two things meant that I kept splitting my yarn. I'm doing a simple 4 stitch cable pattern on these socks, which means that I'm needing to manipulate my stitches more than usual as well. That meant that I was having to do a lot of extra work with my hands to knit these socks and it wasn't fun. Those of you who took the workshops with Carson Demers that we had in June will remember that we want to make the work we do with our hands as efficient as possible.  You can see in the photo below that the bamboo ChiaoGoo needles are sharper than the Lykke needles on the right.

So, I changed my needles to Lykke size US 1 instead and voila! I'm much happier. I'm not splitting my yarn anymore and not having to work so hard. The Lykke are still pointy enough but they aren't too pointy. 

Project number two - not pointy enough! I am currently making the Aliso Creek top (for the second time - I love this pattern - see photo below). I'm using Coastal from Sincere Sheep that I bought from Brooke when she was here with her Trunk Show. I love this yarn a lot. It's the same base as Shoreline from Sea Change Fibers (which is what I used for my Lemon Spritz top for the Olive Knits 4 Day KAL - see other photo below). I'm working the yoke at the moment which has some lace stitches and twisted stitches. Coastal is also a bit of a sticky yarn because it is a linen, silk and merino blend. I needed a size US 4 needle and what I had was an Addi turbo needle, which is not what I normally use.

Sunni in her first Aliso Creek top.