Socks and Stitches

I hate knitting to a deadline. To conquer the inevitable sense of doom that comes from a deadline, I work to finish my project so early that I never feel like I won't make it. I started these socks Friday night:

Specs over at Flickr.

My mother-in-law's birthday is February 20th. Lots of time to spare! Now, perhaps, I can get back to the Oregon Vest. I'm still in limbo over the need to rip since I haven't yet triple checked my work.

A new, and interesting, resource on the internet is The Walker Treasury Project. Here's what it's about:

We're gathering high-quality, color photos of all the patterns in all the Treasury books (including Mosaic Knitting) and putting them on the internet as a visual aide to this wonderful collection.

The only caveat is that the actual instructions for the stitch can't be posted because of copyright infringement. But I can find Barbara Walker's books at my local library, and maybe you can too.

I love to collect stitch dictionaries. I own:

• Barbara Walker's first three books - purchased last year
  
• the Reader's Digest Ulitmate Source Book - a gift from by husband, bought at a book sale
  
• James Norbury's Traditional Knitting Patterns - bought in a used book store
  
• the Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery -bought in a used book store, when I was a teenager
  
• both the first and second book of Modern Lace Knitting - a gift from a knit buddy who had duplicates
  

I like them all, all for different reasons. I aspire to collect Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the Edge. It is astounding how many patterns knitters have created over the years, and yet there are still more to be discovered. Yet ultimately, every bit of it comes down to the warmth and comfort that can be found in a simple pair of socks.