Anxiously Awaiting a Knitting Project

I knew I was addicted to knitting when I started treating it like reading. Before I took up knitting, I read a lot more. I'd have a stack of 5-6 books by my bedside, and would read from one, then the next night, maybe read a bit from another, choosing my in-progress books according to my mood. If a book was really engrossing (e.g. Jonathan Franzen's fictional novel The Corrections, David Sedaris' hilarious collection of essays Me Talk Pretty One Day, Laurie Colwin's food writing in Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, anything by manga artist Junji Ito, and anything by knitter Stephanie Pearl-McPhee), I'd be monogamous and read it the whole way through before moving on to another title. The thing about reading is that I'd get nervous when my pile of unread or in-progress books got smaller, and was consequently always on the hunt for what to read next. If I didn't have anything specific in mind, I'd grow really anxious.

Now, I find myself doing the same thing with knitting. I have 3-4 projects going at any one time, sometimes knitting a bit on this, sometimes a bit on that, depending on my mood. I get anxious if I don't have any ideas of what to knit next. Such is my state now... and I have nothing on the needles.

I do have projects planned. It's just that for the next project, I needed to order a book. After seeing a skull shrug (here, scroll down), and spider fingerless mittens (here), I longed to make textured knitted pictures, so I ordered Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, which (I'm told) includes patterns like this:

Only it'll take a couple of weeks for the book to arrive - boo!

I tried not knitting for a couple of evenings, but broke down yesterday and pulled out some sock yarn. I don't really want to make a pair of socks, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I need to knit something. These socks will be for my older son - that is, I hope he'll wear them. He loves hand-knit socks, but I just noticed today that the colourway has a bit of pink in it. Maybe he'll not notice the pink. Maybe I'm just in deep denial. We'll see...