A Victory, Three Quarters and a Triumph

The Victory:
I've FINALLY finished knitting the Booga Bag, i-cord and all! It's ready...

First Quarter:
...to be felted, except I can't because our washing machine's dead. Absolutely dead. It trips the fuse every time it's used so the house electricity completely dies. It'll take about a week to fix. So in the meantime...

Second Quarter:
...I've started on my Broadripple socks. Except I had to cast on eight times. Why? Because I tried it first with the circulars I have, but they were hideously difficult to use and the cable was all twisted up (three cast ons). So I switched to double points. That was even worse. So after casting on twice there (that's five) I switched back to the circulars. And got halfway around the first set of divided stitches before I realized...

Third Quarter:
...that I'd knitted it the entire thing WRONG on the wrong circular and thus things were chaotic - and to make matters worse the cables on the needles were intensely kinked thanks to being stored for over 10 years coiled up in its packet. I ripped the thing out and cast on again, only to have a HUGE ladder appear in the join. Ripped it out yet again, turning the air blue in the process and of course, all the stitch markers dropped out while I was trying to hold everything in place so I had to redo it yet again before getting so annoyed with the kinked cables that I ripped it out for the eighth time...

The Triumph:
...and grabbed the circulars and took them to the ironing board. And by golly it WORKED.

So now I have two perfectly straight circulars with no kinks whatsoever, and a partially cast-on set of stitches.

I think I'll be able to make it through the night without Sudden Death due to Recalcitrant Cables.

In case anyone's faced the same problem, I present to you:

Shuku's Kinked Cable Solution
1) Take circulars to ironing board. Stick one needle somewhere on board so that it is point down, with the end that's attached to the cable facing up. Try and make the cable flush with the ironing surface so it can lay flat when you stretch it out as described below.

2) Take free end of cable needle. Stretch out the cable so it's laying flat and nicely straight on the surface.

3) Set iron to low heat - setting 2 or 3. Any higher and the cables might melt.

4) Keeping the cable taut, iron it several times. It may take a little longer to get out particularly nasty kinks, but persevere. Believe me, if it worked for mine it ought to work for anyone else's.

Let me know if it works!

And now back to casting on...*mutter*