One of the things I finished over break were the "Angee" socks from the Cookie A sock book:



It's hard to get a good photo of the stitch pattern - it's sort of a lace that looks (to me at least) like waving leaves of grass or maybe cattail leaves. The fact that it's a dark variegated makes it hard to photograph.

Here's another shot of it:



Maybe it's a bit easier to see the stitch pattern in side view.

The yarn is a Fibra Natura (named, ugh, "Yummy." I don't like names like that applied to things that aren't actually edible. And I don't even like "yummy" as a word applied to things that are). It's 100% wool but is very tightly spun, which I think will make it hold up well.

I was afraid I was going to run out, and these socks do take a bit more yarn than some I've made, but I wound up with a bit left over.

I also started the Lepidoptera mitts. I really like this pattern and could see making a couple more pairs in the future as gifts:



(Heh. And in that photo, at the upper left, you can see the stack of 20-some ecology research papers that were my main focus of the day yesterday: I read through them all once, read through them all again and put comments on them, and then today I am going to go through them yet again and assign point values. I figure it's best to grade that way because these are "big" papers (worth a lot of the grade) and the students deserve to have me take some time on them. But I put in a total of probably 6-7 hours on them yesterday, and will put in a couple more today)

Other than that, it was a semi-eventful day. My furnace was doing the "Now I'm lit! Now I'm not!" game again, which ultimately leads to a "lockout," where it will not light for three hours at a go (it's a safety feature, I guess). So I called the furnace guys and, to my surprise, they had time yesterday afternoon to come out and look at it.

I told them the symptoms but then left them to work - I graded papers in the other room and tried not to eavesdrop on what was said (it's like being at the dentist, and having him go "hmmmm" as he looks at a tooth: you expect it's something bad).

It turned out to be the least of the possible problems: oxidation buildup on the sparker. (That happened once before, several years ago). They cleaned it off with some emery paper and re-taped one duct that looked a bit leaky, and then tested the furnace and found it good. (And it's still good, at least as of this writing). I know in some of my DIY home-care books it says the homeowner can do the oxide removal themselves, but as it involves reaching into a furnace and disconnecting a part that is electrically connected, I'd rather pay the cost of a service call (they only charge the cost of a basic visit when it's something simple like that) than risk doing it myself.

I also got a recall notice on my (10 year old) car. It is something to do with the "speed control deactivation switch" (which is apparently a risk even in cars without speed control, for some reason). Brake fluid, it says, can leak onto it and cause a fire.

It's a rather sternly worded thing; they tell you not to park your car near a house or in a garage until it's fixed. I figure that since I've been bouncing over back roads, and parking in tall dry grass, and all of that, for years, I'm probably fairly safe. (But I am still going to try to get out this afternoon to get the fix done, if I can make time).

Incidentally, my parents got the same recall notice - they had the same model car, a few years older than mine. But they don't have it any more - they turned it in for Cash for Clunkers and I presume it's already been melted down. (I'm not sure what their receiving the notice says about either Ford's or the Cash-for-Clunkers record-keeping system).