Oh baby, baby.

I bought the New Pathways in Sock Knitting book last week at Friday Knitting with Company. I stand by my conviction that Cat Bordhi's brain just doesn't work the same way the rest of ours does. As mentioned during Friday Knitting, we'd love to see a brain scan of her's while she is knitting and devising new ways to construct common knitted objects.

As I'm sure countless knitters around the world have done since this book came out, I devoured it. After a couple perusings, I grabbed a set of dpns and some scrap yarn and feverishly knit up the sample sock patterns. The above "booties" are the result of my practice runs.

The purchase of this book also required that I purchase new sock yarn:

The top one is Colinette Jitterbug and the bottom one is obviously Dream in Color "Smooshy".
I cast on the DIC for a Spiraling Coriolis last night while watching Forrest Gump with the family. (My favorite movie of all time I think)

I chose to knit the little sample socks because I have a Great niece/nephew due in January and I figured a few pair of baby socks could be put to good use. As luck would have it, I received an invitation to the baby shower for my niece today so I just need to take the remaining Socks That Rock and knit up a matching hat or maybe even a Baby Surprise Jacket. The nice thing about the two colorways that I had to work with is that one is quite feminine and the other quite masculine. So I can give Mylene both and no matter the gender of the baby, she'll be good to go. Her best friend is also pregnant right now so she can always pass on the other pair if her friend has the opposite gender. Or if she gets like many of us harried mothers, she'll just throw on whatever is clean and handy regardless of the gender stereotype.

Other things on the needles:
I'm on the third generation of Little E's socks. This time I think I will outwit her ever growing feet and have a pair she can actually wear. I'm only about a half inch from the heel but the Cat Bordhi socks have sucked up my sock knitting time.

I did complete the little Patons Classic Wool shrug for Little E. It looked really small while I was knitting on it, but the finished object fits perfectly. It got really hot and humid the day I finished it and so I haven't managed to get it modeled and photographed.

The circular shawl I started out of the Briar Rose Angel Face is coming along slowly. I fucked it up a bit by forgetting the difference between knitting a lace chart flat vs. knitting it in the round. It isn't bad enough to frog and go back (maybe if I had put in a lifeline but alas, I did not). I'm just not feeling this knit. It will probably be gorgeous when I do finish and block it, but right now the nondescript lace knitting is sucking the life out of me. Honestly, I wish I had knit this using a doubled strand of the yarn. God knows I have enough. Maybe if it sits idle long enough and I don't have more frogs and reknits on simpler projects, I may decide to be a perfectionist and frog and restart this one AGAIN.

I can't explain it, but I've been way more perfectionistic than normal lately. I knit, ripped and reknit E's sock three times, ripped and restarted the Invisibility Cloak twice and restarted the Coriolis socks once last night because I didn't like the toe. I've even been knitting gauge swatches for heaven's sake! Oh! and I cast on, knit, ripped and reknit (and have to frog and restart still) an Origami Cardigan out of the Cascade Venezia I won this summer at the Knit Out. What the hell has gotten into me?