Updates, mostly about socks

Apparently, I only have so much attention to spread around. And if I post about my knitting in Ravelry and my books in LibraryThing, then clearly I have nothing to say here. So here's a sock knitting round up.

1. Speaking of LibraryThing, I met Tim Spalding the creator last week at a conference. We drank good beer and talked about Russian formalism, name authority records, gender, and places to eat in Maine. I envy his MacBook. I've decided to make a habit of knitting socks for cool guest speakers at library conferences, so here are Tim's LibraryThing socks. It doesn't show up very well, but I've put the letters L & T on the cuff in purl stitches.

2. No word yet on my appeal for the TOE UP license plate.

3. I finally finished the Deathly Hallows socks that I started back in July. The skull on the heel is adapted from Lindsay Henrick's bag, and made with Knitivity's GlowKnits: my glow-in-the-Dark Mark. I hate intarsia and it was a pain, but the socks are awesome, right?

4. I'm in the middle of teaching another sock class, the second in as many months. The classes are getting bigger: 5 people in September's class, 6 in October's. I'm barely handling it. I like assisting people up the learning curve of short-row heels on Magic Loop, but it can be a struggle.

5. I'm experimenting with gussets. You can see I added some gusset-y increases to the LibraryThing sock above. Cat Bordhi's discovery that gusset stitches don't have to be where we've always put them intrigues me, even if most of her New Pathways don't. So I thought I'd try a Spiraling Coriolis but with a different heel. I originally gave the Andersson Heel a try, but it came out too short. Mel's Widdershins is better.

I guess Sock Wars II is underway. I didn't enlist this year. But I happen to have some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino around, so I might give the sock a try.