It Has to Stop Sometime

Before you panic, or I do, no I don't mean that I have to stop knitting completely, just that I have to stop knitting entries into the ColourMart Lovers Spring Contest!

Entry Number 3 came off the needles on Sunday and has had several baths, a nice stretching session and is awaiting a decent day for TDQ to model it.  Which means I have knit (and designed) two "large neck" shawls and a "small neck" shawl since March 20th.  The contest runs for a couple more weeks, but, even though there are three cones of ColourMart yarn within arms reach of me, I am going to call it a day!

Anyway I have some new toys to play with.

I love interchangeable circular needles.  Especially when knitting lace shawls or doilies.  You can just swap out the tips rather than moving you entire knitting project onto a new needle if you want to change needle size part way through. (Which for some circular pieces is very helpful in getting that little bit of extra stretch that you need to keep it circular when you add in stitch patterns!)  But until now the smallest tip I had for an interchangeable set was a US 2 (2.75 mm)

Not any more!

ChiaoGoo has some new needles, Twist Red Lace Mini's and I am the proud owner of a set of 5 different tips, (from a US 000 to a US 1, or 1.5-2.5mm) 3 different cables, cable connectors (so you can hook the cables together to get longer lengths) and all the little gizmo's you might need to tighten the tips to the cables or stop you stitches from falling off the ends.

The needles actually getting to me was a bit of an adventure (for them!).

When I heard that ChiaoGoo was making them for a "spring release" I emailed one of my favorite drug tool dealers to see if she was going to be getting some. Of course, she was, but didn't have a timeframe when I had asked her. (We are talking January I think!)  When the time was right for her to actually get her delivery, Ouida, of Stitch Dragon, very kindly, boxed up her first set for me and sent them on their way from Florida to Ohio.

I felt like a kid standing outside a candy shop, with money in my pocket, waiting for the store to open as soon as I got my shipping confirmation email.

Four days later that two day shipping still didn't have my new toys tools in my hand, so we tracked the package and for some reason best known to the United States Postal Service, the trip from Florida to Ohio included a small side trip to Texas!

But, I finally have them in my hands and now that I have cast off that third ColourMart Spring Contest Entry, maybe I can play with them!











In other knitting news, I forgot to show you TOB's first pair of socks.

 He did a really good job following the pattern I wrote up for him, washed and blocked them and promptly gave them to one of his teachers!  When he first learned to knit he said he was going to knit me a pair of socks, I have been waiting a while now.....looks like I am still waiting! You can tell he is a process knitter after my own heart, I don't think that he has actually kept a single thing that he has knit!







Oh well, while I keep waiting for someone else to make me socks, I guess I will go play with my new toys!  If you had just got some fancy new, teeny, tiny little needles what would you knit?

~M