In her post today, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee talks about Cat Bordhi’s book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Specifically, she discusses Cat’s different, “outside the box” approach to knitting. The post is well worth the read.

Our sock club got a copy of New Pathways for Sock Knitters as a sort of guide for all the patterns we do. Admittedly, I haven’t had as much time or patience as I’d like to devote to studying it. I wrote it off as being too difficult. But as the Yarn Harlot explains in her post, it’s not “difficult” — it’s that we tend to be creatures of habit. At sock club the other night, one of the women was talking about how wonderful the formula explained in the book really IS, once you understand it — and how it can be applied to any pattern to make a much better fitting sock. It certainly piqued my interest. I think it’s time I gave the book another try.

Anyway, I hardly think it’s worth posting what’s on my needles this week because sadly, it hasn’t changed much since last week. I’m about 65%-ish of the way through my Irish Hiking Scarf. It’s turning out beautifully and I’m quite pleased with it. I have yet to cast on my second red/purple sock (which is supposed to be a Christmas gift). Then there’s the green socks that are also a Christmas gift — they were going great: I turned the heel, knitted the gusset, and was on to doing the foot… and I screwed up some of the stitches (purled where I should have knitted) so it needs to be fixed before I can go on.

Then there’s my sock club sock. It was going well. I was actually really impressed at how pretty the TOFUsies was knitting up.

However, I got to a part in the pattern where you’re supposed to do a left-twist.

I thought I knew what I was doing… but apparently not. ::sigh::

I knit the entire leg chart once through, and it looks nothing like the sock in the picture. So I got out some big needles and some bulky-weight yarn and tried to do the stitch pattern with that, just to see what I was doing wrong. Well I’m definitely not doing it right — but I have yet to have figured out exactly what I’m doing wrong. So tonight before I head to bed I’m going to try and re-read some different directions online and see if I can figure out where my problem is. It can’t be that difficult. (Right?)

Gidget says: “Dis knitting stuff makes me sleepy!”