Pin wars

I bought myself some new pins the other week, because I don't have enough left in the old box for most projects.  I thought they were pretty much the same as the old ones, a pin's a pin, right?  Apparently not.  These pins are rubbish, the attrition rate per project is astounding.  Worse than slightly bent pins is what happened to these two:

 

That kink went right down between the feed dogs and got stuck.  I've never seen that happen - usually either the pin or the needle breaks.  I've since had one more do this, and then one that shattered, and I mean shattered, the needle (think bits flying everywhere and Chris threatening to make me wear safety goggles).  

So, I've gone back to the old pins.  No problem there, and I've now finished the mini-quilt project I was working on, and yes, it did get finished in time for Saturday.  It was a 90-patch quilt, for my Nana's 90th birthday:

For the observant among you, the other 9 patches are on the back.

Lastly, I managed to get a photo of the pinwheel blanket in progress, as I was transferring it onto the next size cable:

 

It's quite a bit bigger now, each round is over 300 stitches, and I've gone up to the longest cable.  I'm going to try and keep going till I've finished the ball, no point having a small amount of yarn left over now is there?