Friday, November 30, 2007

Transformers


My final birthday present arrived today -- a gift from my in-laws. They were ordered at the beginning of the month but didn't ship until Monday, for some weird reason. I was kind of waiting for these before I started Jeff's new sweater. I got me some KnitPicks Options interchangeable circular needles. Yes -- knit-nerd transformers. Thanks, Jim and Carolyn!

For my legions of muggle readers, interchangeable needle sets have been around for a while, but these are new and relatively cheap as such things go. They allow you to switch up cable lengths and needle sizes to create circular needles of various circumferences and lengths.


This set comes with 2 cable sizes, but I got two additional cables of yet lengthier lengths. With these 4 cable lengths and 9 different needles sizes (11, 10.5, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4) I have 36 different circular needles in one batch. Buying those separately would cost a small fortune. I already have quite a few, and I'm wishing I'd gotten this set sooner.

One thing that put me off about these was the weird purply-mauve color of the cables. Was that really necessary? I'm sure the natural color of the nylon or whatever they're made of would have been much more bland. Now, as a man who knits in public, the color of my circular knitting needle cables is hardly a major issue. I'm just not exactly a bright color person. I'm thinking of all the years I'm going to have to stare at this color.


I know, I know -- I need to let this go. As an antidote to all this vibrant technicolor, the KnitPicks company redeemed itself by packing the set in a cool black case. I've been practicing zipping it up like Lily Tomlin does with her zippered bible in the movie Big Business. I can't remember exactly what the scene was about, but I remember getting a kick out of the look on her face as she punctuated a statement, and ended a conversation, by vigorously zipping her bible shut.

Those socks I blogged about last time? Forget bout them. I'm going to frog them. I got to the heel flap and decided that I wasn't going to have enough yarn for a pair. So I grabbed some tan yarn and made the heel flap with that. When I asked Jeff what he thought, he said it was starting to look like one of those sock monkey puppets. Now Jeff is usually quite kind in his comments about my knitting efforts, even when such kindness isn't deserved, so I took this comment seriously. Ribbit. Now that I've got my yarn and needles for Jeff's sweater, I'm on to bigger and better things.

I still need some socks to work on for my meetup, though. I'll probably cast on for some tonight.

4 comments:

  1. KnitPicks often takes a long time to ship -- I ordered from them on the 18th, and my package just shipped today. It's like they still think it's the 1970s, when you ordered from the Sears catalog and knew it would take at least 3 weeks!

    And why do the nickel needles come in that cool case, while the harmony wooden needles come in a functional yet much less cool bag-like contraption?

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  2. I love my options, but I'm with you on the funky purple. I really dislike purple.
    And I think the socks were just something you did to keep you busy 'til the bigger project supplies got to you!

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  3. Ah, I have needle envy. I'm hoping a set will appear at my house for Christmas. And I totally know what you're talking about with the zipping. I watched Big Business many many times as a kid, on beta tape even. It still makes me wish I could yodel.

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  4. I like those. In fact, I just posted about some knit-related stuff on my main site, and I added those as a "wish-list" item. It's too bad about the purple, but I think I could manage to get used to it (especially if it was a gift).

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