Practice Makes Perfect

These are the practice socks from Cat Bordhi's book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Her class is tomorrow at Common Threads from 10-4 and I am so excited. I spent 2007 learning as much as I could about socks and this is just going to set me free. I can feel it! My girlfriends are going to be there, we're going to go have lunch on our break, and I'll be in a yarn store! The pre-requisite for the class was to make the Little Sky Sock (see above), and the Little Coriolis Sock (see below).
And here's the side view...
The Little Coriolis sock with it's right and left version of the architecture was my favorite. And flipping through the book, I find that I'm most drawn to this "pathway" in the book. I'm thinking about making a pair of adult ones where the arches go up around the ankle and continue around the leg. I find myself thinking a lot about the right colors to use for these socks. I haven't worked with Socks That Rock in awhile, and making these little baby booties, reminds me of why I love it so much. The colors were amazing and it feels so good. It's still my absolute favorite sock yarn.

One of the projects that my Best B had brought to my attention was the Butterfly Shawl from the Summer 2006 issue of Knit.1 .
I had loved it at first sight and was excited to see it, as she had already started working on it. Unfortunately other things took over and it had fallen by the wayside. I told her I was interested in working on it and she generously handed the project over to me. It contained two balls of the Gemini Double Stranded Crochet Thread, one finished butterfly, and two half-finished butterflies. I put it in my queue and waited for an opportunity to pick it up. I feel like the opportunity is here and it's time to get this gorgeous wrap underway. I look at the picture and fantasize about having it draped over my flowing skirt during the summer twilight and looking as glamorous and exotic as the woman wearing it in the photo. I picture people stopping in their tracks to do a double-take at the intricate butterflies adorning my shoulders. I've made one of the squares so far, and I think it's going to be great.


The only thing I still have to decide is what color of thread I want to use for the mesh in between the butterflies. The double strand that I'm using for the butterflies is a blend of natural and white. So I made one square so far with the natural crochet thread. I want to do one more with white around the butterfly and see which one I like best. I'm guessing it'll take me about two months to complete. Here's a picture with my hand in it for a perspective on how big the squares are.
I'm going to have to start this from the very beginning because my gauge was so different from B's. It was good to have them as a visual to see what they looked like though.