knitting, and not knitting, as the case may be

I have been working up a slew of projects that are in various stages of finishedness, pretty much none of which i can show because that will invariably be the day the mom to be will read my blog. Whew, that was a lot of words. 

I am knitting. I am working on things. I will show them all at some point in time.

Also, someone very near and dear to me is expecting (IT'S NOT ME) and I get to knit a bunch of adorable baby things for her. Yeah! And since I know she will be finding out the baby's gender, I can pick and chose which loverlies catch my fancy. Even better!

So even though I have X many projects on needles, I felt the need to start something else to soothe my soul.

I'm hoping to turn this:

Into this:

I have never worked with laceweight before, and it scares the hell out of me.

Just winding it was making me tense, as I tend to drop the yarn and make it into an unusable mess. I need a swift, badly. And the color is so much prettier than the photo. For some reason, red yarn looks blown out and icky. It's really rich and beautiful.

I also don't know what to do about these socks.

I hate them. H.A.T.E. The yarn is fine, the colors are fine, the pattern is ok. It doesn't have any give to it, so the socks are very dense and don't stretch at all. They make my legs look like I have ginormous cankles, which is oh so flattering. I hate that I spent so much time on them already and am thinking of quitting, but I really truly hate them. I don't want to finish the one sock, much less start the second. ARGH!