mental note...

They don't work for me anymore! I need something much more blatant!
For the past several knitting projects on my standard gauge machine, I've been telling myself to change the sponge bar before the next thing. At Christmas when I was doing that 4Fhoodie, I was noticing that the needles were up so high that picking up stitches for increases and decreases was becoming more difficult and I thought to myself, I guess it's time to change the sponge bar. Then I did that circular scarf and once you're into a project, it is difficult to change out the bar so I just kept re-knitting the tucked stitches and sort of blamed it on the fine yarn and the circular knitting and maybe sticky latches. I made Nathan's hoodie in early February and it didn't present any issues - heavier yarn, not much shaping, easy work - so it slipped my mind again. I did the swatches and the actual oxymoron scarf for February and I slipped in the close knit bar, completely forgetting the sponge bar issues and everything worked fine. Socks were not a problem or so I thought.
Yesterday, completely oblivious, I set out and cast-on the full width of the needle bed  to make sister Janet my TLR cardi (http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2015/07/my-plan-worked.html- 'my plan worked...' July 23, 2015) from last summer, for her upcoming birthday. I have enough of the watercolour WCD left over from her last dress and I thought it would make a nice outfit with the dress. So the cast-on wasn't exactly a quick and easy thing - anyway, the point was, after knitting about 80 rows and ripping back a few times because I thought the tuck patterning was messing up, I finally gave up and took the piece off - OMG! what a disaster - glad I gave up when I did! Out of the 80 rows (it's a 6 row repeat), I had three spots where the tuck didn't work all the way across but then started again. V-8 bang on the forehead! that freaking sponge bar! I pulled it out and man! I've never seen one thinner! Replaced it, knit up a perfect sleeve and life is good again!