Good start to the week - seems that the Royal Mail don't follow the local public holidays, so my KnitPros Interchangeables arrived on Monday - yay! Overall, I'm delighted with the needles - I've posted a review, which I'll keep updated.
Now that the KnitPros have arrived, I managed to make a start on my Saffron cardigan, that's going to be my 'lunchtime' project. Normally, I'll spend a quick half hour eating lunch at my desk and aimlessly browsing the internet, then get back to work, but I figured that I could make better use of my time by having a nice easy project to work on. My circular shawl project would be no use - it takes over half an hour to do one row, but I should be able to get a good few rows of this cute little cardigan done in the time between eating lunch and having to get back to work. Well that was the theory, but boy, does knitting in public attract a lot of attention! As soon as I brought the needles out of the bag folk were asking what I was working on, who it was for and so on. I spent so much time showing them my pattern, discussing progress so far, and hearing all about their own projects that I barely had time to get any knitting done. Yet, these were people that I'd hardly ever spoken to before - yes we'd nod in the corridor, but that was about it. Who would have thought knitting could be such a sociable thing! While it's been nice to talk to new people, I am hoping that after a couple of days, interest will have died down and I can focus on the knitting.
Sunday 24 July 2011
REVIEW: KnitPro Interchangeables Nickel Plated
Summary:
Lovely needles – easy to work with. Starter pack does represent a good saving on buying the components separately. Only downside is the plastic wallet – quite a cheap feel to it, and not designed to accommodate new tips/cables as you add to your collection.
Detailed review:
Nickel Tips: Nice to work with. Not at all slippy like others have found. Quite the contrary in fact - the stitches feel nice and safe on the needles, and need a bit of a push to move along them. Not much of a push mind you - the stitches move along nice and smoothly. Some have mentioned the tips are cold, but I haven’t found them to be (but I’m used to metal needles anyway)
Cables: Really flexible. Stitches move along the cable easily.
Interchangeability: Great idea and no problems so far. Tips have screwed on to cables without difficulty and the tightening key makes them feel nice and secure. Join between tip and cable is very smooth, with no snagging.
Accessories: Tightening key feels very flimsy, but is probably up for the job – the tips and cables are very fine, so the tightening key needs to be too. I’ve used the short cable with an ender on one end when picking up some dropped stitches, and the enders seemed fine. Not as easy to screw in as the tips though, and I ended up with a slight ‘dip’ between the cable and the ender that some stitches could get caught on. I’m not sure whether this was just because I hadn’t screwed them well enough in. I was in a hurry and didn’t need them ultra secure, so I didn’t bother too much. They were a bit fiddly to unscrew again, but not a major problem.
Storage Wallet: Quite disappointing. Cheap plastic feel to it. The pack has 3 sets of tips, and there are 3 slots for storing tips. As it’s a starter pack, I imagine most people will be intending to add additional tips as they go, so would have expected some spare tip slots to accommodate these. The slots that are there are way wider than required for the tips themselves, so in theory you would be able to put more than 1 set of tips in each slot. I don’t fancy doing that though – too much risk of them scratching each other or getting mixed up. There are 2 front pockets that must be intended for the cables, but they’d need to be coiled quite tightly, and I think I’d prefer to relax them a little during storage. Ultimately, I think I’ll end up making a custom wallet to store them in.
________________________
I bought the Starter set, which has 4, 5 and 6 mm tips, and 60, 80 and 100 cm cables, all in a see through plastic wallet. Each cable pack includes a pair of cable enders and a key for tightening (i.e. the starter pack comes with 6 enders, and 3 tightening keys). I added extra 3mm tips and 150cm cable.
Date purchased: 18 July 2011
Purchased from: Art of Yarn
Last updated: 24 July 2011
Lovely needles – easy to work with. Starter pack does represent a good saving on buying the components separately. Only downside is the plastic wallet – quite a cheap feel to it, and not designed to accommodate new tips/cables as you add to your collection.
Detailed review:
Nickel Tips: Nice to work with. Not at all slippy like others have found. Quite the contrary in fact - the stitches feel nice and safe on the needles, and need a bit of a push to move along them. Not much of a push mind you - the stitches move along nice and smoothly. Some have mentioned the tips are cold, but I haven’t found them to be (but I’m used to metal needles anyway)
Cables: Really flexible. Stitches move along the cable easily.
Interchangeability: Great idea and no problems so far. Tips have screwed on to cables without difficulty and the tightening key makes them feel nice and secure. Join between tip and cable is very smooth, with no snagging.
Accessories: Tightening key feels very flimsy, but is probably up for the job – the tips and cables are very fine, so the tightening key needs to be too. I’ve used the short cable with an ender on one end when picking up some dropped stitches, and the enders seemed fine. Not as easy to screw in as the tips though, and I ended up with a slight ‘dip’ between the cable and the ender that some stitches could get caught on. I’m not sure whether this was just because I hadn’t screwed them well enough in. I was in a hurry and didn’t need them ultra secure, so I didn’t bother too much. They were a bit fiddly to unscrew again, but not a major problem.
Storage Wallet: Quite disappointing. Cheap plastic feel to it. The pack has 3 sets of tips, and there are 3 slots for storing tips. As it’s a starter pack, I imagine most people will be intending to add additional tips as they go, so would have expected some spare tip slots to accommodate these. The slots that are there are way wider than required for the tips themselves, so in theory you would be able to put more than 1 set of tips in each slot. I don’t fancy doing that though – too much risk of them scratching each other or getting mixed up. There are 2 front pockets that must be intended for the cables, but they’d need to be coiled quite tightly, and I think I’d prefer to relax them a little during storage. Ultimately, I think I’ll end up making a custom wallet to store them in.
________________________
I bought the Starter set, which has 4, 5 and 6 mm tips, and 60, 80 and 100 cm cables, all in a see through plastic wallet. Each cable pack includes a pair of cable enders and a key for tightening (i.e. the starter pack comes with 6 enders, and 3 tightening keys). I added extra 3mm tips and 150cm cable.
Date purchased: 18 July 2011
Purchased from: Art of Yarn
Last updated: 24 July 2011
Sunday 17 July 2011
Back on track...eventually
Phew! After two weeks of thinking about it, making a mess of it, and having to draft my mum in to help, I'm finally out of my dropped stitch nightmare. In the end, had to rip back about 3 hours worth of knitting, but I reckon I spent double that just trying to retrieve the situation, and failing miserably.
Still, not to worry - it's fixed now and I've been able to get some work done on it today. Managed to get a few rows past where I made the original mistake, and I'm back to enjoying working on it.
Rather frustratingly, my KnitPros still haven't arrived. The shop did say 6-8 days for delivery, and it's still within that timescale, but I want them now!! On top of that, it's a holiday weekend here, so no postal deliveries until Tuesday at the earliest now. Fingers crossed they'll be waiting for me when I get home from work on Tuesday night...
Still, not to worry - it's fixed now and I've been able to get some work done on it today. Managed to get a few rows past where I made the original mistake, and I'm back to enjoying working on it.
Rather frustratingly, my KnitPros still haven't arrived. The shop did say 6-8 days for delivery, and it's still within that timescale, but I want them now!! On top of that, it's a holiday weekend here, so no postal deliveries until Tuesday at the earliest now. Fingers crossed they'll be waiting for me when I get home from work on Tuesday night...
Monday 11 July 2011
A stitch in time would have saved more than nine...
It's been a frustrating week on the shawl knitting front.
Made a silly, but (what should have been) easily rectifiable mistake at the beginning of a pattern row. And of course, I only realised it at the end of the row! Not to worry, should have been straightforward enough to work back and fix it. Disaster struck though - managed to drop a stitch early on and really messed up trying to pick it up. This happened over a week ago and I'd been dreading going back to it to fix it. I finally bit the bullet on Sunday, and ended up spending the whole day trying to fix it...and it's still not finished! Nearly there, but not quite. I'll be busy most of the week, so it'll probably be the weekend before I can pick it up again.
I'm not going to let it get me down though - I've been really enjoying it, and had been making good progress, so I'm looking forward to getting back on with it.
Got myself a little present to take my mind off of it - ordered a nice shiny set of KnitPro interchangeable needles, nickel plate. I'm hoping they'll arrive at some point this week. I've got a nice little project lined up for them when they arrive. Will need to get my shawl sorted before I start on that one though...
Made a silly, but (what should have been) easily rectifiable mistake at the beginning of a pattern row. And of course, I only realised it at the end of the row! Not to worry, should have been straightforward enough to work back and fix it. Disaster struck though - managed to drop a stitch early on and really messed up trying to pick it up. This happened over a week ago and I'd been dreading going back to it to fix it. I finally bit the bullet on Sunday, and ended up spending the whole day trying to fix it...and it's still not finished! Nearly there, but not quite. I'll be busy most of the week, so it'll probably be the weekend before I can pick it up again.
I'm not going to let it get me down though - I've been really enjoying it, and had been making good progress, so I'm looking forward to getting back on with it.
Got myself a little present to take my mind off of it - ordered a nice shiny set of KnitPro interchangeable needles, nickel plate. I'm hoping they'll arrive at some point this week. I've got a nice little project lined up for them when they arrive. Will need to get my shawl sorted before I start on that one though...
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