Woo!

Ta-da! Here she is, my first sock! I've taken her picture from a variety of angles, because I think she's just so beautiful. Well, really, she's not a conventional beauty, knit in cheap, gray yarn, but she's beautiful to me.
It was pretty painless to finish her up, minus a near-disaster. I grabbed what I thought was the empty needle to move it into position--but in fact I grabbed a needle full of stitches and ripped it out. I think I stopped breathing. I just stared at the whole mess in horror. "Maybe if I don't move, and I close my eyes and pray, and then open them again, it will be like it never happened." No such luck. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. "Is this what a stroke feels like?," I wondered. Fortunately, I came to my senses, and very carefully pushed the needle back through the homeless stitches. Usually when I try this, I end up dropping half of them, and being a new knitter without the knowledge to fix but a few of the simplest mistakes, I end up frogging the entire project. This time, however, the needle and stitches cooperated. I got all the stitches back on the needle without dropping a single one, and continued on my merry knitting way.
I started working on her mate last night. I found that the top edge on this sock is a little tight, so I tried to cast on particularly loosely for the next sock. I then promptly messed up the ribbing--I think this is because I was distracted by the Orioles actually winning a game; they're playing on the west coast, so it was late, too--so I had to start over. I really need to get a book like this one to teach me how to correct my mistakes so I can stop frogging entire projects when I drop a stitch.