Heel replacement

I was up late on Xmas Eve last year finishing some festive socks for my mom.



But this morning I noticed that the heel was unraveling on one of them.



Supposedly, the big advantage of the short-row heel is how easy it is to replace. We'll see.

I was pleased with these socks. They're not identical: the stripe patterns are reversed. From the toe on one (and the cuff on the other) they follow the striping pattern I created based on the Copenhagen cathedral chimes.

A Sock Yarn Spree

I spent last week in Maine, and it seems I couldn't leave a yarn store without picking up some sock yarn.



Most purchases were from Quiltessentials in Auburn, a quilt store with a small but stellar inventory of yarns. Because I couldn't wait until I got home, I went back to the store the next day to pick up some extra needles and get this skein wound into a ball:



This is Done Roving, and I love it. It's not obvious from the picture, but the colors are really unusual: shades of turquoise and red clay (the colorway is called "Southwestern"). And what do you know...these socks I'm knitting up are sized to fit me.

Gift Season

[Updated December 18]
Miss Manners has always disdained wish lists. That's nice in theory, but when you've got a birthday in December, it's just rude not to help out the people who want to get you something.

I've kept an Amazon.com Wish List since they first started offering them, and that has been great. But if someone doesn't want to buy me books or media, it's hard to let them know what I want.

Last year, I created a Froogle Wish List. Not quite as convenient as Amazon, but it does have a wider range.

This year, I'm discovering that I want stuff from Cafe Press. I haven't had much luck getting Cafe Press stuff to appear on a Froogle list, so here's my Cafe Press wish list:

• Guerrilla Stitcher hoodie. (Although I wear a large shirt, the hoodie should probably be extra large).
• Spiral Pi t-shirt.
• "wtfwjd?"mug.
  

I'll add more as things catch my eye.

Hybrid

A survey by Harris Interactive found that GLBTQ people are more likely than heterosexuals to buy a hybrid car. So I fit the profile. But they also found that gay men are more likely than straight men to have satellite radios (don't have that), and that we prefer luxury cars to economy cars.

I'm eager for the day when having a hybrid isn't a "statement." See, I think there are Rules of Taste for messages on the back of cars: the tasteful driver can have one message and one parking sticker. If you have to have two parking stickers, then you sacrifice a message, but you can't put on two bumper stickers just because you lack a parking sticker. A message can be a license plate frame, an alumni window sticker, a bumper sticker, or a magnet. Vanity plates can, on occasion, be given exemptions on a case-by-case basis, but they usually constitute a message.

Currently, I have no extra message: no HRC icon or rainbow flag, no Darwin fish or Brights emblem, no political messages. The indication that my Civic is a hybrid seems to constitute a message all its own.

[From Wired's Autopia blog]