Largely Unrepeatable: A Brief Respite

I've taken the last several days - maybe 10 or so - off of serious craft work. Not because I wanted to or even because I had to; it just.. happened. And somewhere in the mix, I lost both my knitting and my spinning mojos. If you see them, please send them on home with the nearest hot police- or fireman. Thank you.

In other news, the Social Pressure Experiment is going well. I've hit a bit of a snag in terms of a baby knitting project, however. My friend Meredith is having a baby girl on Oct. 9, and her shower is the 23rd of August, so I've begun my knitting for both mom and baby. I was going to make a Seraphim Shawl for Mer out of the Petals sock yarn from The Knittery, but then I realized that it should really be washable, so it's getting frogged and re-started at some point. But I digress - that wasn't the snag.

Mer, Elizabeth and I are all on board with the idea of ridiculous baby hats. There is a finite period of time in which you may dress your children as strangely as you choose, and then it's over, and you had better have taken a million pictures to show their eventual prom dates. After all, what's prom without the requisite parental embarrassment? To that end, I'm planning a slew of (okay probably more like 3-4) silly baby hats, and I wanted to start with this one. I have the perfect purple yarn, but nothing that looks remotely like pie crust resides in my stash. And for good reason, since I would never ever wear that color, nor foist it off onto someone else. It's really only good for one thing: pie crust. My dilemma is this: does this fall under the category of Project Scope Issues? I haven't started yet, so I'm not certain. I'll have to do a bit more thinking.

In the mean time, I whipped out these little beauties:

Pink Sky Socks, 50 yds.

They're the first pair of learning socks from Cat Bordhi's book, and I love them. So cute! So tiny! Even ManCandy squeaked a little when I held them up. I haven't tried them on the cats yet, but I think there might be a Puss in Boots photo op in here somewhere. I'm also going to take the opportunity to recommend the short rows explanation from Bordhi's book - while some of the instructions aren't quite as clear as I would like them to be (I'm looking at YOU, Bartholomew and your so-called Tantalizing Socks!), the short rows section is excellent. This is the first time I've ended up with no holes in my short row heels, and I'm thoroughly excited by the prospect.

Here's the second learning sock, Coriolis:

Both pairs are made of the Panda Silk I bought for Sock Madness, and I'm pretty sure I could make matching mom-sized socks if I did them toe-up. Or maybe me-sized socks. We'll see.

I also finished the Stutter Socks:

Stutter Socks, Regia Silk 4-ply, 436 yds.

The heels are a bit big, so I may rip them back a bit to tighten up the instep, but then again, I might be too lazy. Anyway, they're done! Woo! That's one more thing on my list of things to finish this summer.

I've been working my way up the sleeve of my Ribbi Cardi, but it's boring to photograph so no pictures there. To be honest, most of my pictures are boring lately anyhow, so really it's no surprise. If I got my act together, I could probably finish the knitting of my Ribbi in one evening, and all that would be left is the zipper. Ahem. This sounds like a job for the train up to SF tomorrow, except we'll be spending the night and if I finish the 1/3 of a sleeve I have left, I will have no knitting. Crap.

Clearly it is time to cast on another project. One that doesn't suffer from the miserable pattern-writing SNAFU that is Cat Bordhi's book. More on that later, but for now, a perplexing mystery: