Summer is here and so are the new Signature Convertibles. This is a new concept so please allow me to explain: We are now offering circulars that are convertible to other lengths within a size which allows for flexibility and more than one use for your needles. If I had a penny for every inquiry about why we had pulled the size 7’s, when they would be done etc. I could take about 10,000 of you on a nice tropical vacation.
This seems like a good time to let you know what has been going on
behind the scenes. We had some issues with cables cutting on some of our
needles. We came to the conclusion that there will always be some of
those because of the way a TINY percentage of people hold the
needles–with pressure right on the join area. In looking at this we did
months of testing to see if we could minimize that problem. Testing of
even a single change can take many weeks– first block time to get a
tweaked design machine time (1-3 weeks wait), run samples (1-5 days),
send off to testers (1-5 days), have testers test and send back reports
(1-2 weeks), review all reports (1-5 days) and make new design tweaks.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. As you can see even a few changes can add up to
months. During this time we had the “ah ha” moment– why not allow people
to have the ability to convert their needle stalks in a given size to
more than one length? We know people have asked for something like this
and that it would allow the multiple use of a single pair of needles
which would be economical for knitters. Back to drawing board to see
what we would need to do to have this happen. We wanted a design that
would work easily and without extra “tools” to make changes, or be
complicated in some way. Our testers included people of all ages and we
had them ask non-knitters of all ages if they could make the changes in
cable assemblies. We had unanimous approval. We think you will love the
new version of Signatures (so cleverly named by the husband of one of
us) which will be available Tuesday, May 28, 2013. 
What this means is that you can buy, for example, a pair of US 4 needle stalks with a 5″ length and then buy a single cable assembly or as many as are available for that combination. In this case you could buy a 24″, 32″, 40″, 47″ overall length assembly either one at a time or as many as you would like. And, YES, you can still buy the older model “fixed” needles but only until they are all gone. We have also changed our packaging and think you will like that too.
We appreciate our customers’ patience during this long process. Even as we all wanted to have the 7s back, all the people who inquired about them were very understanding about our work to bring them back. We hope you love the new Signature Convertibles as much as we do.