I spent all day Saturday knitting on Hiraeth, my yellow sweater.
You may not think of it as yellow, but trust me, it's yellow. I cannot tell you how much fun this is. There are no words but it's such a happy experience.
I woke up Sunday and thought I really ought to work on some socks. I pulled out my plain Kroy socks and started to knit. My hand was shaking badly as it sometimes does. I kept working on it but it was such a pain. I dropped needles. I grabbed a wrong needle and pulled it out. I struggled to knit the last stitch and so on. It felt stupidly impossible.
A random out of nowhere thought found me wondering if changing the the style of needles I was using might be the answer. I had just picked up the sleeve on the blue and am using a small circular needles for that rather than DPNs. I thought about maybe trying the 9 inch circulars but ewww. I don't think they will ever be for me. I decided to try the two sock needle methods I did have, two circs and magic loop.
I did magic loop first. It's okay and with my current troubles, much easier than my beloved DPNs.
Next I pulled out and cleaned the needles I bought to do small circumference colouwork, ie colourwork mittens, a very long time ago. They are the old style Addi lace with the brass finish. The brass gets sort of gummy over time. It's the finish over the brass that's the trouble I think. It needed a good cleaning and then they work fine.
These were okay too. I do have quite a few sets of 2.5 mm fixed needles with different cords and different cables. There are a few more to play with and try till I find the best of them.
Sometimes aging and age related changes mean you have to give up things you always liked to do. Sometimes you just need to adapt to the change. The other thing to keep in mind is, you might like a certain thing now like dpns or metal tips, but there is a reason other things are out there. There will be a point or a project where they may well work for you.
I don't know about anybody else but I want to keep knitting and having fun. I am willing to do what I need to. Goofing around with needles is a small price to pay for being able to knit and wear wool socks.
