Finally - we have returned to our routine, having moved past the holidays and a trip to NYC. I finished a pair of socks in bare alpaca yarn - very soft and toasty warm! Just in time for the single digit temperatures we are experiencing. Early this morning, I trudged out in the snow under our 30 foot blue spruce with sunflower seeds, cracked corn and bits of dry bread to feed my backyard buddies - cardinals, sparrows, housefinches, nuthatches, chickadees, and a lone hairy woodpecker. A flock of starlings stopped by to pick up the bread that no one else wanted. The squirrels munched some seeds, but also buried some of the corn down into the snow. Isn't this the rainy day for that they were storing up food for? Guess those little creatures plan for worse than this.
So many pairs of socks finished, I have pulled out the cable knit hooded sweater I have been working on for my daughter for a very long time. It is a project that is taking forever. It's a modification of Elizabeth Zimmerman's sweater coat in Knitting Around. One of the reasons it is taking so long is that I decided to make it with worsted weight yarn...I think it must require 5 times as many stitches!. It's interesting to knit - lots of cables and sheeps fold and other fun textures. I am designing the sleeves as I go. It's fun, so far. It's a good project for bitter cold days like this, but I miss the quickness of socks. If I start another pair, I'll avoid the sweater again. Ah well.
Since I picked the sweater back up, I switched from the bamboo circular needles to the knitpicks nickel plated interchangeable needles. These are so much easier to use than the bamboo! I like how slippery the needles are and how flexible the cord is. Unlike the smaller size knitpicks interchangeable needles I started using for socks, the tips are not unscrewing from the cord. That is a very frustrating quality, so I am glad to see that it's not an issue with the size 10 tips I am using for the sweater. Have any of you used knitpicks interchangeable nickel-plated needles? Do you have problems with them coming loose? I wonder if it is common. Some of the connectors come loose and some don't. Knitting socks on 2 circular needles means lot of connectors. At least half of them come loose, snagging the yarn, slowing down my progress. I had one cord that the connector fell off of a day after I got it in the mail. Knitpicks was good about it. They sent me an entire new package of 2 cords as a replacement. I was pretty happy about that.
That's it for now. See you on your blog!
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2 comments:
I don't have the KnitPicks interchangables but I do have a set from Boye. Those have little holes in the connectors that fit a wire gizzy and a grip pad for the needle itself so you can tighten the connection. My set is over 25 years old so I was surprised that when one of my knitting students purchased a new set there were no instructions with it on how to put the parts together. I had to show her the method because she'd already had the points come off several times when she just finger tightened. If the KnitPicks don't have something similar, I'd suggest getting some of the waffle style shelf covering and putting a couple small pieces with your set so you can grip the connector and point to tighten them.
Actually, yes, the Knitpicks sets do have the little "wrench", they call it. The tips come loose even when tightened with this wrench - not all of the joins, but several do. I am wondering if it's a manufacturing problem. I will try the grippy shelf-liner fabric though and see if that helps.
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