Knitting Needles are not good fire starters

How do I know this? Long story (hard to imagine, I know). My tempting sweater has sleeves now. I don't think they're going to fit. I don't particularly care any longer. I am NOT taking it off the circs to try it on. If it doesn't fit, I'm going to hack off the sleeves with a hachet and wear the body as a tube top or wear it with tight sleeves that cut off the flow of blood to my fingers. I swear to all that is holy that I WILL wear this sweater one way or another. My vendetta to finish this damn sweater is way beyond personal now. It has gone to vandalism.

I swear this is an easy pattern. I made five, count them one, two, three, four, five little sleeves for this freaking sweater. Yes, I only have two arms. I LEARNED a few things in the making of this bad boy:

#1 -- If the only double pointed needles available in your LYS are SHORT needles and you'll be putting a lot of stitches on them DON'T FREAKING BUY THEM. WAIT and find the normal length dpns. please.
#2 -- If you are stubborn and/or stupid enough to buy 2 sets of the short dpns for this anyway (the pattern needed a spare set) then FIND SOME DAMN point protector things for the ends of your needles.
#3 -- If you are too STUPID or LAZY to find the dang point protectors, get very VERY good at picking up dropped stitches without twisting threads. Of course, I did NOT have a crochet hook with me, nope, I had to use a knitting needle to do the dirty work of going up through 3 or 4 rows each dropped stitch. I actually DID get very VERY good at this, so in a small way I probably learned something and grew as a knitter.
#4 -- Once you finally decide you could teach a class at picking up knit and purl stitches and think, HMMMMM, maybe I should try to keep the stitches ON the needles instead of picking them up at EACH FREAKING TURN OF THE dpn's, get enough to actually cover all ends of the needles. I only could find 3 and so it added about twice the time & work to stop, move, knit, stop move knit, repeat. Giant pain in the ass, but much better than picking up more stitches.
#5 -- I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but if I work on dpns and leave the needles where they are, I end up with freakishly mutated stitches once the needles are removed. I had pretty rib for about 18 stitches, FUNKY UGLY BIG start to the next rib, then repeat for the rest. I know there's got to be a way to knit on dpns without the funky stitch mutations, but the only way I found to get these done was to stitch an extra 2 stitches into the next needle at each go-round. This way, instead of having all my ugly stretched stitches in a row, they are spread out all over the sleeves, giving it a more wholesome mucked-up appearance. I may have to take a sock kniting class to learn how to actually use these damn needles.
#6 -- Clover wooden knitting needles do not burn readily on their own. I had a ceremonial burning of the short needles in our grill. Yes, I know that was stupid, throwing money away (I think they cost $7.50), No, I don't particularly care. It was quite healing and invigorating. I did save one set of the damn things because who knows when I may need these instruments of tortue again, but the other set I put into a pretty little tee-pee formation just like they teach you back in girl scouts. I ended up having to add crumpled newspaper and a LOT of matches. I didn't do the lighter fluid thing only because we were out. In the back of my head was a beavis & butthead voice doing the "fire! fire! fire! heh heh heh" but I restrained myself after a little bit of maniacal laughter.

My daughter had a blast at soap box this weekend. Actually, we all really had a great family fun weekend. I'm tired and have burnt ears. BURNT TO A CRISP ears. I was the queen of sunscreen. My little butt-white red-headed munchkins came home not burned, feeling good. I forgot my ears. Lived in the ball cap, FRIED ears with little blisters along the edges. owww.

My girl was the only 8 yr old rookie racer at the rally this weekend, and she did great. We did not hit any walls or other cars and never crossed the yellow line in the center. There were some pretty good wrecks we saw (no one gets hurt, but the cars take some damage.) One little girl Beth raced against had her brake line snap and she went FLYING past the slow down uphill part into the pea gravel at about 32 mph. Beth said it was "COOL!" to see and the little girl was a bit shaken but not hurt at all. We also did not win any races until the end of the second day. She was close so many times, and really held up well with the whole learning-to-drive-competively thing, but it's still hard not to EVER win even one heat down the hill. She ended up winning two straight heats in the consolation bracket and it was like she won the world championship. I mean, this quiet little girl was SHINING from the inside out. She made great friends, we all had fun, lots of good outdoor time, ate hotdogs and breakfast burritos, laughed, played, and all the rest. Joey spent most of his time polishing Beth's car or in the lego tent with the older boys creating cars and racing them down wooden ramps.

Ended my weekend with a visit from Jeff last night. He went to the lake and did the dad thing with soccer games and such this weekend, then came over after I had the kids in bed with a movie and a bottle of wine. We hung out with my folks for a while, shared the wine with dad and chatted. Then went downstairs to my little basement hide-a-way and snuggled and talked and all that good stuff. Apparently I now have a boyfriend. Little Miss Relationship-phobia with a bf? I figured screw it. I'm liking the guy, why worry about all that crap. If it works for a while, great. If not, no biggie. Why am I hiding away from true feelings all the time? OK, enough rambling.

I'm going to finish that damn sweater one way or another in the next couple of days. If it's not wearable, I'm burning more than just the dpns. No frogging and reusing the yarn. no being environmentally conscious. Nope, it had better damn well be wearable. Maybe I should buy some of those Denise interchangeable METAL needles. safer for me. safer for the needles.