broke a needle

So. I have an exam to invigilate today.

I decided to take the "little purple thing" (which is now the only purple thing I'm working on, as I finished the big purple thing before Christmas) as my knitting.

As I was gathering up my bag to go this morning, I heard a "pop."

That's a bad sound, I thought. So I checked.

One of the casein needles had broken into several pieces.

Son of a GUN! (well, that's not EXACTLY what I said, but you get the idea). Casein is brittle. I suspect dry weather makes it more brittle; some of those early plastics seemed to be sensitive to such things. What happened is that shear stress got applied to the needle, and it failed. (I am sure somewhere out there there are engineers who test the properties of knitting needles?)

So I had to quick find a replacement. I was using straight needles for this, and I don't keep that many on hand, because most of my knitting is done on double-points, and I use circulars for big things like sweaters. But I managed to scrounge up a pair of straight needles that are within a hair of being the same size, and transferred the stitches.

I think these needles are from the box that a friend of my mother's passed on to me. The friend's mother had developed Alzheimers and could no longer knit* and no one else in the family knitted, so she thought I might want the needles. They were mostly straight needles (but there was one set of pale-pink aluminum size 1 double-points I sometimes use for socks), but I hung on to them because they were interesting - they weren't just the Susan Bates Aluminum that you usually see as the only "craft item" at thrift stores (or at least that I see here - our thrift stores almost never yield anything cool; I think there are people who "pick" for antiques stores and they get there first). There were a couple of needles I suspect were Bakelite (camphor smell), some wood ones that might be handmade, and the ones I grabbed for today were an older type of plastic - slightly soft, slightly flexy. No maker's name on the needle caps so I don't know their provenance. (Also, some of the needles in this set had the old UK numbering system on them. I don't know but I vaguely remember that my mom's friend's mother had British relatives)

(*Though they say the hands remember, and I vaguely remember reading that Elizabeth Zimmerman, after she could "no longer speak" - they never came out and said she had Alzheimer's but I assumed it was something like that - could still knit. And I know that even after weeks to months away from a stitch pattern, I usually only need pick it up and I remember how to do it.)

I'm wondering if I should have some kind of little farewell service for the broken needle. I really liked those casein needles, and they're very hard to come by. (I think I ordered them, years ago, from Elann). I've never seen them for sale anywhere else here in the US.

I also think of the Shinto ceremony I read about once: Harikuyo. Bent or broken sewing needles are laid to rest (in blocks of tofu) and are memorialized. I think it's interesting to have a bit of mourning for an inanimate object and to recognize that tools serve us well during their life....I see it as a sort of grateful recognition of the goodness of some tools.

I will say I hope the breaking needles aren't an omen for how the rest of the day goes. I decided I'm going to go do my "big" grocery shopping (which I wanted to do sometime soon) today. Yes, it's a bad day to do it: Friday afternoon, payday for most folks, and also the Friday before a big party weekend.

But.

The "there's maybe a little chance some snow will be mixed with the upcoming rain" has been upgraded into a full French Toast Emergency, to begin on Sunday afternoon. And usually with these kinds of things, it's the day before that the stores get mobbed and start to run out of stuff. So I better go today.

And anyway, if I go to Sherman, it won't be so bad. Yes, Sherman is more populous than here, but they also have more grocery stores per capita than we do - so the crowds are more spread out. And anyway, if I go there, that means I don't have to go to the Voldemart, which, there's something about it, I don't know, that makes people behave very BADLY - rude, pushy, selfish, and with a tendency to do things like block aisles completely or get into the "20 items or fewer" lane with 100 items.

I'll probably go to the Kroger's but I might hit the natural foods store first. (They are generally not mobbed the way regular groceries are, and the people who shop there seem to have a different attitude towards shopping). I'm also going to check in and see if any of the magazines I buy off the newsstand have new issues out (Knitscene, which I should just take out a subscription to, and the British knitting mags - which are actually cheaper on the newsstand than they would be to subscribe to, with the cost of shipping)


In a real emergency, I'd probably have enough food (other than fresh milk, and maybe fresh vegetables) to last me, but I'd rather not wind up drinking reconstituted dried milk if I can avoid it. Also, after 10 days or so of being vegetarian, I think I need a meal with meat in it.

I will note: If there are a couple days early this coming week with no updates, it's that I'm snowed in. My new home computer still is on order so I don't have internet connectivity from home, and if it's simply too bad to come to campus, I won't. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that because I really would rather not cancel Monday's lab, but it looks like it could get bad Sunday evening.