Now That The Worst Has Happened,

My biggest fear with the Princess shawl has been that a stitch would catch on the join between needle and cable and snap.  I knew this wasn't a hypothetical, that it was just a matter of time.  Sure enough, yesterday morning I found a broken stitch as I was working my way across a row. 

Drat. 

Now that it's happened, however, I can move on knowing it's not the end of the world. 

Yes, it takes lots and lots of time to carefully backtrack - undoing all of the stitches until you come to the break, and then going back even further so that you can add the new yarn.  Yes, joining new yarn when you are dealing with such fragile work is a pain in the you know what.  Yes, I would far rather be happily adding new stitches than fixing this type of problem.  Yes, there is the stress of making sure you didn't drop any stitches, and/or of having to fix any runs that have happened. 

But it happens, you deal with it, and you move on. 

Knitting problems have never bothered me all that much. 

The bigger issue is what to do about those joins. 

I quickly abandoned my original addi turbos after finishing the edging because the joins had become loose after an earlier project.  They were thus ok for the edging, but once I had to move stitches over the join they had to go.  The current needle is an addi lace needle...and while the (very, very slightly) more pointed needle is nice I hated whatever they coated the needles with to give them more grip.  I, quite perversely, like my needles to be as slick as possible, and it took a good 20+ rows to wear most of that junk off of the needles!  Besides, as with the plain addis, the joins obviously loosen after time making them a problem.  Addis do come with a lifetime guarantee, but if I have to go through the roughly  6-12 sets it would take at this rate I think I would seriously test the patience of the local yarn shop owners. 

I did buy a bamboo circular from The Gossamer Web, and while the joins look superb they are bamboo...and are thus both fragile and too 'sticky' for my taste.  I am debating whether or not to try them...and leaning towards not. 

I had hoped to finish the first of the three charts for the feather border this week, but instead I think I'll set it aside and figure out what I want to do about this perplexing problem!  As always, suggestions are welcome.