Is It Me?

Or are DPNs a slightly different size than straight needles?

I was getting ready to Cast On for a special hat and you know how I hate to cast on to DPNs... Okay, maybe hate is too strong of a verb. It's more like, I find it mildly annoying to cast on to DPNs.

My trick, btw, is to cast on to a straight needle, knit two rows, and then switch to DPNs and continue in the round. Then you just seam those two stitches at the end of things. Okay, so you have to seam a bit, which does kind of defeat the purpose of working on DPNs in the first place. But it is only a couple of stitches, so I guess it comes down to what will annoy you more... seaming two stitches and weaving in the ends? Or trying to think up new and original swear words when one, two, or five stitches fall off the ends of your DPNs?

So, since I've lately exhausted my repertoire of clever and creative swear words (hey, there's been a lot of road construction going on in downtown Indy right now) I prefer to cast on to the straights.

I also like to do the ribbing on a hat in a needle size smaller than the rest of the hat. I don't know what it is--switching the yarn from front to back, maybe?--but the ribbing stitches all seem larger than the regular knit stitches, even if you are using the same size needle. So since I will be knitting the hat with #6s, I will go down to a #5 on the ribbing.

But, look at this. My #6 DPN

And my #5 straight

SAME SIZE.

And, in addition to all of that... I don't think this yarn is very soft. I need to get some different yarn. Something that will be softer. And darker.

Am I just psyching myself out about this hat?