As a person who can truthfully say I gave birth to an 8# 13 oz baby with no anesthesia, I will tell you that getting the “little” circs out was a million times harder—and remember, a baby that size has a head like a bowling ball. Things happened over and over that made me think we had a voodoo curse. Things that never, ever, ever happen happened. Thousands and thousands of size 1 needles are colored with no problem. Send out the size 1 circ stalks and disaster. Order cable that comes spool after spool just perfect and the size 1 cable comes all twisted and unusable. Order machine parts for the machines to make them and although they are perfect hundreds of times, we get them back bad, and bad in ways that we have never even in 62 years considered they could be wrong. In a non-machining comparison—when you look in a cloudless sky you expect to see a yellow sun. Think looking up and seeing a blue sun. It just never happens except sometimes it does.
But FINALLY, finally, finally we have the size 1 circs done. You will notice one difference – they don’t rotate, but you will get the fabulous points that you love on the straights and DPNs and all the choices of stalk length. And, as a wonderful addition – you can get them in a 16″ overall length. I did up a small hat for our rescue dog Cooper, who was pretty good about modeling.
I know the very next deluge of questions will be “when will the size 2s and the 2.5 mm be done?” They are next in line along with the reengineered US 7s, but we need to build lots of size 1s first and also fill in with other things that have been pushed back. Please believe we are working everyone here as much as possible. We have added some machinery and put more people on the job—which is wonderful. In a tiny way we are doing our part to get the unemployment numbers down! We also want to thank those “secret” testers who helped us get here. I personally tested too, of course, and here is a baby blanket made on the size 1s in their various revisions which I will be donating to the INNS program at our church where homeless people find some respite in the coming winter.
So even though we often think of Spring for birth here at Signature it is the Fall knitting season that begins with something new….we present the Size 1 (2.25mm) circulars which will be shipped on approximately 9/15/2012 with a pre-sale in the days preceding. If you should be going to Stitches East in Hartford Connecticut in October we will have them there as well as a few of our retailers will be stocking them so check with your LYS that carries SNA for availability.