Finished knitting my first pair of kilt hose

[Tobus]

So to be clear, you're using 5mm needles for most of this project? I have a set of 5mm circular needles, but most patterns I've been able to find call for a smaller size.

I use 4.5mm for worsted/aran weight yarn, unless I need a specific gauge to work for a pattern. But since these socks are of my own recipe, as it were, and I adjust my stitch/row counts to size them for my legs and feet, I stick with the needle size I like best for the finished product. And that's 4.5mm on the right needle.

Since I do this on short interchangeable circulars (shifting over to magic loop for the heels and toes), I always use 4.5mm on the right needle and 4.0mm on the left needle. The smaller left needle doesn't affect the stitch size, but it does let the incoming stitches slide more easily as I work. It really helps my speed. And as a bonus, when I start my short row heels, where I'm working back and forth on magic loop (no longer in the round), that 4.0mm left needle is the one that does the purl stitches as I work the wrong side. It helps tighten up my purl stitches to be the same as my knit stitches that I'm doing with a 4.5mm needle. I really like this combination.

That said, on future work where I'm doing stranded colours, I may step up to a 5.0mm needle just to keep overall tension more equal to what I get on single-colour work with a 4.5mm needle. And right now, I just started the watch cap that I mentioned above, so I'm using 5.0mm to get the right finished size.

Honestly, I love my interchangeable circular sets and don't see myself ever knitting on anything else. I have 2", 3", and 5" tips with a lot of different cable lengths and couplers so I can make them any needle size and cable length I want. As my socks get larger up the calf, I can just swap to a longer needle or change the cable combo to accommodate, so I never have to bunch up my stitches or stretch them out as I work.