False starts, progress, and...oops!

It's Friday afternoon and I'm ready to cast on my project for the Knitting Olympics. First I can't find any needles. I needed a long US 5. I have 3 US 5's, 1-16", 1-24" and 1-36". The 24" and 36" are on projects in progress. I consider putting one of these on holders, the 24" is too small and the 36" has markers on it as well. Plus, if I needed a break from olympic knitting, then I'd have to switch back or work on something else already on needles. I could have bought another set of US 5's...but then I remembered I had an extra a set of Denise needles. Usually I keep a set intact for convention knitting and with Stitches West around the corner I couldn't really break up the set, except that I bought another set recently for my daughters to use!
I cast on 197 stitches of the worsted weight Dale Hauk (with teflon) and had a go. Now I don't use these needles regularly. Just at conventions or for a quick swatch. I had never used them for a project and wasn't used to them. After about the 3rd row of seed stitch I found the stitches weren't sliding around the cable all that easily (even with the teflon -- ha, ha). Well, with all the scrunching, pushing, pulling and twisting I accidently disconnected one needle from the cable.

It took a bit of fiddling to get past that but I've stuck with the needles (being careful not to twist the stitches around the join) and after some weekend knitting I've gotten this far. That's the self striping version of Karaoke which is very soft and silky. I've got about 5 inches of the vest done and need to get to 11 1/2" of body before dividing to do the fronts and back. You can see the schematic in the backround of this progress shot. I thought I'd leave the rest of the rest of body knitting to do while at Stitches, it's perfect mindless knitting to do during the Fashion Show and the Student Banquet. And then I found this:
That slipped stitch is suppose to be a purl stitch. Must have missed it when I was putting stitches back on the needle...sigh.