Heel Decided

I did some research yesterday on heel options for toe-up socks.  A lot of them look wonky to me - either because I've tried them before and failed miserably, or they just sort of stick out.  Things like the afterthought heel sound like a good idea, but I'm not so sure I like the way they end up.  Also, given the concerns I expressed yesterday regarding sock heel frailty, I wanted to find something a little more durable than just short-rowing and knitting on.

Right now I'm planning on using the foot approach detailed here.  It includes an Eye of Partridge stitch on the heel flap, and walks you through the rest of the construction as well.  I'm definitely making only one sock at a time, though, so my execution will be slightly different than what is described there.

I wanted to mention again how helpful it was to have some muscle memory regarding how to execute magic loop knitting.  Neuro and I had a great time in 2012 learning/trying a bunch of new things, two of them being magic loop knitting and also two socks at a time (I think on two pairs of circular needles?).  I didn't love making two socks at a time; I rarely fail to start the second sock in close proximity to finishing the first, and there usually isn't too much craziness with the increasing/decreasing.  The magic loop was OK, but I honestly prefer double-points.  At least until I met Frozen Margarita.  I would *never* be able to make this thing on double points, even without any of the changes I'm making to the design.  The lime slices are worked both in the round and also back and forth at one point, so things got a little crazy for a while there trying to figure out which needle to slide over and which to knit with, but somehow my hands knew what to do, most likely remembering their experiences from 7 years ago.  (I'm sure my motor cortex had something to do with it as well!)  Perhaps it's time to consider another Thing A Month?

In other news - I wanted to tell you about another book I've read recently:

I forget where I'd heard about it, but I'm so glad I read it.  The author, Gretchen Bakke, a cultural anthropologist with an interest in energy impacts on society, is not only an enthusiastic subject matter expert, but she is also an engaging (albeit sometimes complexly structured) writer (fortunately, either she or her editor made appropriate and liberal use of commas!).  So - a couple of takeaways: 1) the way we get electricity delivered to our homes has literally remained unchanged since its inception nearly 100 years ago; 2) electricity is weird.

Regarding Point #1 - remember when the entire eastern part of the US went dark one afternoon in 2003?  This massive power grid failure turned out to be the result of an overgrown tree and a failed backup system algorithm.  Evidently our power grid is one busy squirrel away from having another massive failure.  Additionally, the current power grid infrastructure isn't well-suited to the incorporation of renewable point solution energy sources, such as wind and solar.  Yet we continue to lurch towards these, without a thought as to how it will all come together.  Bakke provides a wealth of history and information on these topics.

Regarding Point #2 - I hadn't thought much about how electricity gets here, but if you had asked me how it worked, I would have described something like how water gets here - there is a source, there is a pipe, and when you open one end of the pipe the stuff comes out the other end.  It turns out that this is a terrible comparison.  Electricity isn't just sitting there waiting for me to turn on my coffee maker - - it gets delivered as it's created.  Which means that if no one is planning on the other end, I might be waiting a while to get my coffee.  Who knew!!!  Bakke spends less time on this aspect, but it also blew my mind.