Needle selecting apparatus for the selective raising of the needles of circular knitting machines wherein the needles are raised by jacks individually associated with the needles, the jacks having selecting butts of a plurality of progressively varying lengths disposed at a pair of levels on the shanks of the jacks, and wherein three pattern drum controlled radially positionable cams act progressively upon the selecting butts to raise selected jacks which, in turn, raise their associated needles. The selected needles knit a reinforce yarn in addition to the body yarn thereby to provide visible reinforce areas in hosiery while the non-selected needles knit only the body yarn. The jacks are arranged in a plurality of adjacent groups of jacks, each group of which contains a plurality of jacks and each of which has a common length selecting butt, at a first of the two levels thereof, with the length of the common length selecting butt being progressively varied in adjacent ones of the groups of jacks. Individual ones of the plurality of jacks of each group thereof, have progressively varying lengths of selecting butts at the second of the two levels thereof. A first of the jack-raising cams progressively raises the groups of jacks as a whole to an intermediate level, after which a second of the jack-raising cams progressively raises individual ones of the jacks of each group thereof to a higher level, and the remaining one of the jack-raising cams raises to the higher level those groups of jacks which have previously been raised to the higher level by the first two jack-raising cams.
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