Stockinette will curl.  It's the nature of the fabric.  If you are using animal fibers, then you can block it, but it will still curl a bit. 

I live in Montclair, right next to Claremont, and would LOVE to participate in an IE SNB.  Has anything happened yet?

You could probably use most any eyelash yarn for those.  GGH Apart and Gedifra Techno Hair are both really soft and would work well.

I love Opal sock yarn!  It could be used for other things, but remember that it is fingering weight to be used with US 1-2 needles.  Doubling up would probably work out weird because it's self-patterning.

If you really really don't want to make socks, maybe you could do these:  http://mlminspirations.com/patterns/HFMGloves/HFMGloves.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stitchnbitch-losangeles/

They meet every Tuesday in Santa Monica.  There are a few splinter groups too, like in South Bay(?) and Atwater Village.  

That fuzziness is because of the mohair content of Lamb's Pride.

I'm working on a much larger version of this bag right now.

DPNs are invaluable for knitting in the round.  Yeah, circs are great, but if you were making something like a hat you would need to switch to DPNs at some point.  There are also the two circular needle or the magic loop methods, but I prefer DPNs.  DPNs aren't hard at all, the only difficult part is getting used to them.  

Personally, I mostly use my circs to knit flat because then the cord holds the weight of the project, not the needle.  If you don't want to spend tons of money on different size circs, you should get a set of interchangeable.  Denise makes a great set, it's about $45, which is a steal considering how much I've spent on circs so far.

Gloriana - Did you block it?  Mine was all misshapen but while blocking I stretched it into shape.