Overload

Today I'm going to attempt to convince myself you that knitting does not, in fact, suck arse and that I don't have the most boringest knitting blog in the history of knitting blogs (why no, the green scarf isn't done yet. How'd you guess?) by releasing a deluge of cuteness upon you. Even with my sanity hanging by a mere thread (or, in this case, a light fingering weight dark green 50% angora, 50% merino), I'm hoping that I'll you'll read this post and remember that, yes, knitting (and anything knit-related, really) is indeed wonderful and totally worth losing your mind knitting the same f***ing 8 rows from a bottomless wee skein that never gets any smaller, all in the hopes of making a scarf that will probably make me cringe whenever I look at it it.

A while back I experienced one of those classic "Tara's gone and had a great heaping slice of crazy pie"^TM moments. I was meeting up with my friend Caroline at her LYS when it *suddenly* dawned on me that she was pregnant - despite knowing about her condition for about 8 months (my ability to ignore the obvious is legendary). She was VERY pregnant, which was a total miracle because for the longest time she didn't think she could get pregnant, and I wouldn't be seeing her again before the baby came, and I totally needed to get her a gift. Wait, I needed to knit her a gift.

Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Except that I had this epiphany on a Thursday, and I was meeting her that Sunday. That right there would be the crazy-pie part.

Booties! I thought. Booties don't take too much time, I can totally crank out a pair of booties in 3 evenings, right? Off to Ravelry I went, but nothing was really standing out to me. These seemed too girly, these were adorable but I didn't have anything suitable in the stash, these were OK I guess but sort of... meh. Click, click, click... and then I found them. The perfect ones. They had just the right balance of cuteness and knitterly-ness.

Pattern: Duck, from the 2010 Spring + Summer Knitty
Yarn: String Theory Caper Sock in Bee's Knees
Needles: 2.5 mm
Modifications: none

I admit, I got a bit scared when the "Essentials Only" version still printed out eleven pages of bootie pattern. I worried when I read a few people's comments on Ravelry about the knitted-on i-cord being an incredible time-suck (this was before the green scarf. I mock you, i-cord weanies). But once I cast on, I was completely charmed. I kept forcing Phil and the children to admire admiring them, cooing over them as I would a real baby.

So charmed was I that I immediately cast on for a second pair (using some DIC smooshy in the Strange Harvest colourway), this time for my good friend Robyn's charming baby Quentin. He'd already arrived, but heck, a late duck bootie is better than none at all, right?

See? Cute, non-sucking-my-will-to-live-and-breathe-endless-green-scarf-of-doom knitting. I can do it.