Yes, you can fly with knitting needles

I get this question all the time on planes: “They let you bring your knitting needles onboard?”

Yes, despite the curious, tangled, and sometimes ridiculous state of TSA rules about what you can and cannot put in your carry-on luggage, it is perfectly acceptable to bring knitting needles. According to TSA rules:

Knitting needles are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage.

Items needed to pursue a Needlepoint project are permitted in your carry-on baggage or checked baggage with the exception of circular thread cutters or any cutter with a blade contained inside which cannot go through the checkpoint and must go in your checked baggage.

Apparently some knitters have taken to carrying this page as a printout with them to security lines, due to inconsistent knowledge of the rules on the part of TSA personnel. I’ve never had a problem with my knitting needles (bamboo or metal) nor the one-inch scissors I bring for snipping thread. (I forgot these scissors exactly once and spent 10 minutes on a plane gnawing through yarn to cut it. I had no idea how resilient yarn is to teeth!)

I think the curiosity about knitting needles arises from the general confusion about the logic behind TSA rules. What is it about 3 ounces of fluid that makes it suddenly safe? Why are matches permitted in carry-on luggage but banned from checked luggage? Why is a pair of 3-inch-long scissors permitted but a 2-inch Swiss Army knife banned?

Another outcome of these rules is that it gets people’s creative juices flowing. If my airplane seatmates are any sample, people who would never have thought to attack anyone with a knitting needle suddenly offer, “But you could stab someone’s eye out! You could get them in the throat!” And of course, since my current needles are bamboo, some immediately conceive of sticking them under fingernails for torture. A reality check reveals how ineffective such attacks would likely be due to the dull nature of knitting needle points, but ultimately it just reminds everyone how any household object could be used to inflict some kind of damage, if wielded by a sufficiently motivated human.

At what point do the TSA rules themselves become an instrument of terror?