Dear – well. I don’t know who’s done it, but it’s clear someone has. I started the very nice February Lady sweater on straights, as is my preference, and now that I’m a ways along, it’s obvious to me that I’m going to have to switch to a circular. I’m running out of room, which is a very good reason to use a circular and temporarily suspend my belief that straights are better all the time.

I any case, I went to the circular needle storage thingie (I have this one) and was surprised to see only one totally crappy, dented, scratched and short needle in 4.5mm. “Huh” think I, because that’s totally weird. 4.5mm is an oft used size here. I stood there staring at the spot where they should all be until it occurred to me that it must be that I use them so much that they didn’t get put away. Yup. For sure. I close the closet and go over to the stash bin that sits by my desk, where recently used circulars are hung on the handle, waiting for the urge to put them away to come over me. (It has been a while.) There’s a gauge on my desk, and I start sizing them, looking for one of the multitude of 4.5mm circulars I own.

Not a single one. None of the needles hanging there are 4.5mm. There are several 4mm, a couple of 5mm, but not a single 4.5, which is way gone to crazyville. Totally insane. I’ve been knitting for 36 years and I admit, I don’t care for circs, but it’s not like I shun them when it’s right to use them. I’m stubborn and set in my ways… not STUPID. This place should be filthy with them. Where in the name of merino wool could they be? I start rifling through all of my project bags, suddenly and entirely convinced that the many, many 4.5mm circular needles must be in stuff I’m already knitting. I mean, I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I shred the upstairs room, maul through the living room baskets, dump out the closet in my office and all the bins nearby. I find a lot of interesting things (really. I have a lot on the go. I should get back to some of these bad boys) and I do not find a SINGLE 4.5mm circ. (I do, however, find many projects on 4.5mm straights. It’s like being taunted.)

I am about to throw an entirely juvenile temper tantrum when I remember something. I keep one of those Knit Picks interchangeable sets (with both wood and metal) in my suitcase for knitting emergencies. I bolt up the stairs, open my suitcase, and start flipping though the sleeves, which I have intelligently labelled for just these occasions… That’s when I see it. To quote my Quebecois friend Jéan, “I look in the package and there it was… Gone.” That sleeve is empty. There is no 4.5mm tips in either wood or metal, which absolutely clinches it.

Clearly, someone has broken into my house and stolen all of the 4.5mm circular needles in an attempt to drive me wild with frustration (congratulations, by the way) and provoke exactly this sort of response. There’s probably some hidden camera somewhere, and the perpetrators are sitting in an unmarked van with a whole bunch of wool, a tangled mound of my 4.5mm circulars and are, even as I type, laughing themselves sick, falling about gasping for air and pointing helplessly as I rip up the house. I’m sure that they’re knitters who just love circulars. Adore them even, and this wee jaunt is some sort of retribution for the things I’ve said in the past about their needle of choice. “We’ll show her” they thought. “She’ll see the glory and the light of the one true needle” and they plotted this day, lo many moons ago, knowing that eventually, something wouldn’t fit on a straight and I’d go crying to the needle case. How they must have clapped their hands and bounced in their seats, seeing that I was going to knit February Lady, calculating my gauge and reading the pattern. “An XS in Aran weight yarn!” they cackled, “That will never fit on a straight!” and they imagined their vindication as I was forced to admit that this time, this time, only a circular would do.

Yeah, it was a masterful plan, an adept strategy, a most satisfying tactic. Oh, the hours they must have waited. Oh, the hours, knitting in their dumpy old van (it would be dumpy, because no mastermind of a knitter would spend yarn money on a new van. That’s not the sort of thing that evil knitting geniuses do) waiting, knitting. Hoping against hope… because, and this is the thing… they could only steal one needle size. If they took all of my circulars, surely I would have discovered the diabolical nature of their intent. I would have seen. It would have been obvious. No, no… they’re better than that. They took only one size… but all of that size. Every single 4.5mm needle of use. They left only the short, dented one, knowing that only a big project would drive me to it – and then they waited. They rolled the dice. If I needed a 6mm, nothing would come of their plot. If I hadn’t gone down a needle size to get gauge, it all would have been in vain. Yay verily – they took a chance, and today, today, in a dingy unmarked van, parked somewhere close to my house, there are pro-circ knitters, all in a heap, so happy that they can scarcely breathe.

I just know it.