I've survived

what will hopefully be my last illness of the season. My god...you'd have been amazed my the amount of phlegm one body can produce.

Anyway.

I've decided to expand my sock knitting repertoire, so I pulled out Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters (vol. 1). I am in complete awe of the way her mind works. It's this combination of 3-D thought plus math that I just find completely mind boggling.

The only other thing I could compare this with is with the Theory I studied in my MA. It kills you when you're trying to decipher it (and you begin to question the state of theory and philosophy and it's validity as a field of study---because it just isn't right), but when you get through it and discuss it with everyone else (and the two people who actually understood the thing--that would be my friend Sara---explain it to the rest of us mere mortals), that you finally understand its genius.
At this point I am contemplating why this book exists and how the hell could I be knitting in the wrong direction and am somehow on the second sock, when I've been following the directions for the first sock the whole time. Why??!!
And why the heck is the sock looking so wide and kinda loose. It's like the sizing is off after I measured 3 times. This is my first toe up sock, so I get that the shaping is going to be a bit different, but I need to figure out how to position my stitch markers so that I can start knitting the heel directions.
The thing that sucks is that the sock is for my baby brother (the finished monkeys are in hiding until I can get his socks done--how could I give my sister socks and not him), who is ever so patiently holding my ball of yarn as I knit. I told him there might be a mistake and I needed to take a break, so that gives me a few hours to figure out how to turn it around and get it to work. Of course, I may have promised to take him to Greenfield Village to go on a train ride (I love my season pass with all rides included) to help tide things over.