The Best Yarns for the Sentro Circular Knitting Machine

If you’re new to using a circular knitting machine, you may be wondering about the best yarns for the Sentro. A lot of problems people have with their circular knitting machines can be cause by yarn behaving badly, but it’s not always easy to tell which yarns will work the best.

The following are the best yarns for the Sentro that I’ve found (so far!) and my tips for picking a yarn that hopefully will work well with your machine.

Considerations for the Best Yarns for the Sentro

There are a few general things to think about when it comes to picking yarn for use in your Sentro or Addi circular knitting machine, before we get into some of my favorite brands and styles.

Yarn Weight

The first thing to think about is the yarn weight you’re using. Weight refers to the thickness of the yarn on a scale of 0 to 7 (with 0 being the smallest and 7 the biggest).

Most people start working with their Sentro using medium or worsted weight yarn, which ranks as a 4. That’s totally fine, but I found that my machine like light or DK weight (that’s number 3) even better.

People commonly ask if they can use bulky yarn in their circular knitting machines and the answer is no. They’re not built to deal with the thickness and you will have a lot more trouble with them in terms of dropped and tucked stitches, if you can get them to go through your machine at all. It’s not really worth the hassle.

Saying that, there are probably some yarns classified as bulky/chunky/number 5 that aren’t as thick as others that might be possible to work through the machine. You can always try it but you’ll probably have to go really slow to ensure mistakes aren’t happening and to keep your hooks from breaking.

Yarn Content

The best yarns for the Sentro or Addi aren’t necessarily made of any particular content. I’ve had acrylic yarns that I liked, as well as wool and wool blends (though this post focuses on acrylics since that seems to be where most people start).

I think the most important thing is that the yarn is smooth and consistent in terms of thickness. That will make it easier to work with.

Again it’s not necessarily impossible to work with novelty yarns, thick and thin yarns or otherwise textured yarns on a circular knitting machine, but you will have to go more slowly, pay more attention, probably fix more mistakes, and the result still might not end up being something you like.

Yarn Color

I know this sounds made up, but people who use their circular knitting machines a lot will swear to you that certain colors of yarn are easier than others within a particular brand.

It doesn’t seem like this would be possible, and I don’t know if it’s a difference in the dyeing process or the chemicals used or something else in how they are made, but I have experienced this, too.

Working with Red Heart Super Saver (more on that below) in bright blue made me want to throw my machine out the window, but a sage green yarn was super smooth and much easier to work with. In general with the yarns I’ve worked with so far, brighter colors seem to be harder to knit with reliably.

If you’ve had this experience I definitely want to hear about it, because it sounds so weird but I believe it is real!

A Few of My Favorite Yarns for the Sentro

I mentioned above that my machine loves DK/size 3 yarn, and my absolute favorite of those that I’ve used so far is Mary Maxim Mellowspun DK. This 100 percent premium acrylic yarn is soft, smooth and so easy to work with in the machine.

It comes in 33 coordinating colors and skeins of 284 yards, so it’s a pretty good value, too.

I also used some DK weight baby yarn from Mary Maxim (that it doesn’t look like is made any more) and Big Twist Baby, also discontinued, which said it was worsted but worked like a DK.

Speaking of Big Twist, the regular medium weight Big Twist Value yarn worked fine for me. I used dark blue and dark green and I think the green was a little easier but neither one was too hard to work with. But I really loved the Big Twist Living yarn, which is what I used for my rainbow loop scarf on the Sentro.

I don’t love Caron Simply Soft on the circular knitting machine, because I feel like it’s easy to get snags or stitches that are split. That said, if you go slow and pay attention and are willing to fix mistakes its not too bad. And I was totally surprised that Simply Soft Party, which has a strand of glitter in the yarn, worked perfectly well to make my circular knitting machine snowman.

Mary Maxim Starlette was another good one, soft and smooth and easy to use. Definitely among my favorites!

So What About Red Heart?

I said earlier I’d tell you more about working with Red Heart Super Saver, which seems to be a yarn lots of people pick to start their circular knitting machine journeys.

It doesn’t make my list of best yarns for the Sentro because it’s so unpredictable. A few colors were fine, while others (the aforementioned blue, bright pink to name a few) were completely nightmarish. This is why I started blaming it on the brightness of the colors, but I don’t intend to do more experiments to see if that’s the answer.

Because there are many other value yarns you can choose from (Big Twist is probably my favorite of those) I wouldn’t go out and buy RHSS to use in a Sentro on purpose unless that’s all you can buy locally or you need a specific color. I was using up yarn from other projects and now that it’s all gone I don’t think I’ll buy more.

But as with anything, your experience may vary. Your machine might work with some yarns better than mine and seem to have a vendetta against ones my machine likes. It’s a great idea to buy a single skein of any new-to-your-machine yarn and test it out before you buy a bunch just in case it doesn’t work out.

What do you think? I’d love to hear what you thing are the best yarns for the Sentro or Addi machines.