A sock has got to begin somewhere

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the break room at work, knitting on my Sockapalooza 4 pal's socks. I don't get much time at work, maybe two, three rounds (knitted two at the same time on two circs), but having so little time to knit these days - that's really important. Anyway, one of my team members goes past the door and sees me knitting (freaking muggles, stop looking at me funny and asking stupid questions unless you own a pair of needles and some yarn you're eager to learn how to turn into something useful). Here's the dialogue that followed:

Pal: "You're knitting baby booties".
Me: "No, these are adult socks".
Pal (raises an eyebrow): "They don't look like adult socks".
Me (stretching the toe and half the instep to show that the width alone negates baby socks): "But they are, look - that's the toe..."
Pal: "They don't look like adult socks".
Me (sighing to myself): "Every sock has got to begin somewhere".


These are the Spring Grass socks and I love them. The pattern is simple and easy to understant and by lucky alignment of the stars, the Lorna's Shepard Sock yarn on size #1 needles works perfectly for the gauge required to fit my pal's feet. Which brings me to the only bummer about this Sockapalooza project: my pal's feet are significantly smaller than mine, by both length and circumference. I'm talking about at least a size and a half down. I can't even have Ant try them on (yes, his feet are smaller than mine). I'm plotting making some sock blockers to her feet's specs, but it just ups my enxiaty levels about fit quite a bit. Cross you fingers for me everyone! Please?

There's another half a pattern repeat done on them now, but it's not yet worth more picture taking.

And now for something completely different:
Are there any yogis among you? I need some advice. I've been twisting my limbs into unnatural shapes for almost two months now, and I'm beginning to get the impression that it's not only that I'm an impossibly inflexible klutz - my mat might also be to blame. I have a cheapy old thing from Wal-Mart I got when I started doing pilated three years ago, and while it was fine for the pilates mostly horizontal positions, it feels way too thin and slippery for the stability demanding yoga. I've been looking at some mats at work, especially these four nice guys, and I just don't know. Is the extra thickness worth it? What does the "extra sticky" or "extra traction" good for? Are they really worth it? Some of those things aren't cheap... And there are some nice colors and cute designs on the regular thickness/traction/stickyness from the Gaiam website on sale...
What do you think? Any expert knowledge/experience/opinion will be super appreciated.
Namaste.

P.S.
This post was brought to you by this here feline who kindly let me use my hands for something other than patting her every few minutes. She loves it when we're home all day (yes, I'm in my PJs. It's my day off, for crying out loud!).