Welcome to our new home.
There's lots of old friends here and we all seem to have been revitalised by our shiney new surroundings.

Let us know when you are about to go in, if you don't appear after two hours we will send in a man with a digger.

I got the Knitpro interchangeable set with the plastic needles but found that the tips on the smaller gauges got damaged so am slowly replacing them with the wonderful beechwood ones as and when I start a new project that needs a new size.
I love them, once you get the hang of screwing them together really firmly they are really good.
I did a ladies cardigan all in one piece
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lizzie-5
and found it very handy to use the shorter cords as stitch keepers for the sleeves etc, as they come with screw-in end stops.

Going to check stash tonight, there is some stuff at the bottom of the pile that hasn't seen the light of day for several years.

I need to stop saving stuff for 'when I lose weight!'

If I ever do lose enough weight to drop a dress size I'll have an excuse to go on a massive stash restock.

I have a Jali PDF trouser pattern that I have made several times without any problems.
Mind you it is for some loose elastic waist trousers so if I wasn't too accurate with the lines it was no big deal.
A more structured pattern would be more challenging.

I knit a bit, but am not very accomplished as I knit too tightly.... so much so, that sometimes I can't transfer the stitches  :-\ Any suggestions gratefully received 

My advice is a very large gin and a very small tonic and cast on with needles one or even two sizes larger than the ones in the pattern then knit the rest with the suggested size needles.