Knitting on an Island: Stalled

To use a very Guernsey quote - "Bugger!"

I'm stuck

My Girasole has been going sooo welll ( can you hear the sarcasm). Absolutely nothing wrong with the pattern, it is beautifully written and should be a joy to knit - and would be if not for the problems I have been having

1. I was going along swimmingly when bang! The cable on my interchangeable needles parted company with the tip, sending stitches cascading into oblivion ( yes I'm being dramatic, but I had 200+ sts on the needle and about half of them fell off - and it was a pattern row too)

2. After swearing copiously I grabbed a second slightly smaller needle to make it easier to rescue the floundering stitches. I carefully got them back on to the new needle and then proceeded to swap the tips for the correct size - Nope! For the first time ever, a tip was stuck and neither pleading or swearing would make it budge, so off I had to go in search of yet another cable and transfer all the stitches yet again!

3. So here we are back on track on a nice long ( 150cm) cable knitting away again, watching the women's downhill skiing when I glanced at Chart D - yup My inability to read a simple chart had resulted in completely forgetting to reverse the direction of the yo's in the middle and I had to rip back 8 rows of 280+ sts and put the sts back on the needles - yet again - sigh!

4. This pattern is beginning to feel cursed - again I emphasise that the pattern its self is fine no reflection on the designer AT ALL. But having just finished chart D, correctly this time and just having doubled the number of stitches - the cable went AGAIN! Or rather, the new cable went too - grrr!

5. I managed to cobble together 2 shorter cables, with a connector that would hold all the stitches, but to be honest it isn't ideal. The connector keeps getting stuck and I am having to manoeuvre the stitches around the cable much more than I would like :-(

6. And now I have run out of yarn. I have 4 skeins of cascade 220 on their way from Webs, but they are somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic at the moment. so I have taken the opportunity to order some new cables from Get Knitted in Bristol that should get here before the yarn so that I can transfer the stitches YET AGAIN before the yarn gets here.

Still, I'm halfway through the 2nd repeat of chart E so I'm getting there

So it's back to knitting on the sample for Moonfleet It is looking good and being laceweight is putting far less strain on the joins so hopefully I won't be replacing any more cables...

Back to work on Monday, so won't get as much knitting done next week :-( Unless the yarn for Girasole gets here pretty quick I think my Ravelympics gold could well be in jeopardy - never mind it's not life threatening - it's only knitting....