New Pretties

 

Yesterday my first set of Darn Pretty Interchangeable needles arrived!  I ordered these on January 1 of this year, so it was only an 8-1/2 month wait!

For those of you who are wondering why on earth anyone would wait that long for needles, I'll fill you in.  Darn Pretties are made by Dyakcraft here in the US, Vermont actually, by Tom and Linda Diak.  The needles are hand turned, hand finished and hand assembled.  A few years ago, the wait was only 2-3 months from placing the order to completion.  Then the Yarn Harlot mentioned how great they were.  She has such a huge audience that all of a sudden the Diaks were swamped with orders.  Almost overnight, the wait time jumped to well over a year.  The Diaks hired more people and they bought more lathes.  Of course, until early this year, they were also letting customers choose their own mixes if they wanted more than one wood color in their sets.  There's still a long wait, but they are getting faster, and if you want to knit on gorgeous handmade needles, it's worth the wait.  I knew I wanted some, but I know I need more than one set, so I hemmed and hawed about it, trying to decide what to order.  (Originally, I was going to put everything into a single order.)  Then I decided to just start ordering and then as things were ready, they'd start shipping.

So, here are my first Darn Pretties!  This is a large (4-10.5) set of 5 inch tips with regular points in Rosewood.  I'm so happy with them and can't wait to cast on a new project.  If I switch over to them on any projects in progress, I'll have to make a new gauge swatch.  Different needle materials will give you different tension even if the needle size is the same.  I don't want to knit a new gauge swatch, so for a little while at least, I'll just unroll them and look at them while I knit.