A needle bed and needle combination for a flat knitting machine includes a needle bed, a plurality of parallel sinkers provided at a front end of the needle bed, knitting needles and stitch elements provided in needle grooves, and a needle selection unit. Two knitting needles are arranged in parallel in the needle groove between every two adjacent sinkers, and are separately configured to make a knit stitch, a tuck stitch and a loop transfer stitch. The stitch element includes a control stitch element and elastic stitch elements. The control stitch element, the elastic stitch elements and the needle selection unit form the needle selection mechanism. Two elastic stitch elements are connected to the two knitting needles, respectively. The control stitch element is located above and engaged with the two elastic stitch elements. The needle selection unit is provided above the two elastic stitch elements.

A circular knitting machine includes a needle cylinder rotating around a vertical axis and a sinker ring rotating with the needle cylinder. The needle cylinder has in its outer edge portion vertically controllable tip needles with needle hooks opened downwards as loop-forming elements, and for each tip needle, a surrounding sinker supporting the loop-formation is held movable in the radial direction on the sinker ring. Further, for each tip needle on the needle cylinder, a press sinker is kept on the sinker ring horizontally in radial direction, to close the hook tip of the tip needle by pressing the needle tip to the needle shaft. The press sinkers are each disposed on the sinker ring between two adjacent surrounding sinkers. The circular knitting machine allows needle wear to be reduced and a selection between weft knitting and warp knitting as loop-forming techniques is enabled in a single machine.

A circular knitting machine includes a needle cylinder rotating around a vertical axis and a sinker ring rotating with the needle cylinder. The needle cylinder has in its outer edge portion vertically controllable tip needles with needle hooks opened downwards as loop-forming elements, and for each tip needle, a surrounding sinker supporting the loop-formation is held movable in the radial direction on the sinker ring. Further, for each tip needle on the needle cylinder, a press sinker is kept on the sinker ring horizontally in radial direction, to close the hook tip of the tip needle by pressing the needle tip to the needle shaft. The press sinkers are each disposed on the sinker ring between two adjacent surrounding sinkers. The circular knitting machine allows needle wear to be reduced and a selection between weft knitting and warp knitting as loop-forming techniques is enabled in a single machine.