Seven Score

You know how you sometimes get very caught up in weird conversations? As we were driving home from the cottage, the subject of birthdays came up. The Gambler said that maybe he would turn 40 this year (rather than 2 years from now) to get it over with. I made the comment that the only reason why the ages of 20, 30, 40, 50 etc caused so much angst was that they ended in zeros. I pointed out that if our numbering system was base 7 rather than base 10, that we would have totally different milestone years to dread. (I have no idea why I picked base 7 *- maybe it was fate) We then got in an argument heated debate over what base 10 number was the equivalent of 100 in base 7. The Gambler said it was 70, I said it was 49. To try to prove my point, I counted out loud in base 7 as I kept track of the (base 10) number of digits I had spoken with my fingers. Which is harder to do than you would think it might be. We were still doing the "70" "No, 49" "No, it's 70" thing when I started to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Anyways. Pictures. Knitting. How about some pictures of knitting? Not my knitting - here are 2 knit garments on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum. They were from an exhibition of the collections of the 2008 Royal Collage of Art Fashion graduates. This dress was knit out of triple stranded Rowan Polar; the designer used the custom made needles shown behind the garment to knit it. I wonder how large her tension swatch was. This dress is machine knit. The neat thing about it is that the trompe l'oeil zipper is not printed onto the fabric, but it was programmed into the actual design using 4 different shades of yarn (apparently the maximum number of separate yarns that can be used with this particular knitting machine). So theoretically, it could be reproduced in handknitting using either stranded or intarsia techniques. Which is cool. To me at least. But then again, I get all worked up about wacky things like numbers. *I never did watch more than a single episode of Dr Who in my formative years - I was more into Monty Python. Which is a good thing, since I don't know how long it would take me to knit the requisite scarf.

Ad-ition

Last night we went to see Slumdog Millionaire. The movie previews were "brought to us by" A Large Canadian Bank Who Shall Remain Unnamed. So the bank is sponsoring advertising now? Isn't that like my phone bill being sponsored by Nike?

You say Stasher like it's a bad thing...

You know how every so often you come across some obscure piece of information that you find fascinating for entirely inexplicable reasons? This weekend I was reading some information from our provincial Poison Control Centre - it was regarding the appropriate treatment of overdoses. There was a phrase that made me laugh: "Whole bowel irrigation is appropriate for the management of drug stashers, but not drug stuffers" I freely admit that part of the humour was probably derived from the fact that it was around 3 AM, and I was starting to get a bit punchy. Since I'm not hip to cool toxicology lingo, I had to do an internet search to find the following information: Stashers are people who pack their GI tract with bags of heroin in order to smuggle the illegal drug from one country to another. In these persons, the drugs are carefully packaged for safe passage. Stuffers on the other hand, are people who ingest all the drugs in their possession in order to conceal the evidence from the police. Because these packages are typically not designed for safe GI transport, they easily rupture and frequently cause poisoning. Tee hee. Stashers. Oh man, I really have to get some sleep...

Who knew?

Did you know that it's still possible to send a telegram? I remember telegrams being a common occurence in movies during my youth, and can vaguely recall a telegram being read out at someone's anniversary/graduation dinner years back. In this age of relentless connectivity, I'm not entirely sure why you would need/want to, though.

Election night

This morning as I drove into work I heard about a big gathering planned at Yonge/Dundas Square that would celebrate Obama's anticipated victory. (For non-Torontonians: Yonge/Dundas square is supposed to be our equivalent of Times Square, if Times Square was private property and specifically designed to be a place to plaster with ads for concerts/events/markets etc). I decided to go check it out, since today will be considered historic by many. As I rode the subway downtown, I thought about how great it is to live in a big city, with amazing things happening just around the corner every day. At 10 PM (Eastern), the crowds had not yet appeared. But I could at least watch the election updates on one of the outdoor screens, right? Maybe not. On the up side, there are some great winter sun vacation deals available right now. Even CTV (the network which boasts of having Canada's most-watched newscast) chose to run ads for So You Think You Can Dance Canada rather than broadcast coverage of an event that will affect the whole world. Even one of CNN's doofy "Holograms" would have been better than this!

15 clicks of fame

I listened to an interesting podcast on microcelebrity this morning. I have to wonder what this says about popular culture in general; do we get the same benefit from relationships that are internet based as we do from those that are based in real life?

When you care enough to send make fake the very best

First, there was wallpaper. In the 1980's, wallpaper was big. Then came the borders - to complement your wallpaper, or to use alone as an accent. Then, some time in the 90's, faux techniques became The New Thing. Smooshing, stamping, stippling, stencilling - you could look like you had wallpaper without all the hassle and expense. At some point, wallpaper companies started to sell wallpaper that looked like faux techniques - you could look like you had done a wall treatment without all the mess and fuss. Art imitating life imitating art, or life imitating art imitating life? Once upon a time, greeting cards were made by the nice people at Hallmark, Carlton, American Greetings, et al. Then papercrafts became popular - why buy a card when you could create one yourself, complete with embellishments and personalization (or at least make one with a computer and ink-jet printer)? Last week I had to pick up some things at the drugstore (like a new combination lock, for instance), and I picked up a Christmas card for The Gambler. Today I went to wrap his Far Side Calendar, and dug out the card. I noticed that the barcode/price blurb on the back was a sticker separate from the card. I wondered if it was because the original price was different, so I peeled it off. The card was blank underneath. Weird. I took a look at the back of the sticker - I noticed that there were bits of glitter on it. Odd. I looked at the card closely - it's a simple design. The graphics and letters on the front are green glitter, slightly raised - the effect you would get if you drew/wrote them in glue and then sprinkled on glitter.The inside of the card is printed on a separate piece of paper, using a basic font. Hmmm. The card looks handmade. You need to examine it closely to determine that it was commercially made. Art imitating life imitating art, or life imitating art imitating life? What a weird world we live in. Merry Christmas to all - hoping that the gifts of health, happiness and peace find their way into your lives.....with or without bar codes.

Trying to evict the hamster from my brain...

...because as I lie in bed awake at night, desperately trying to get to sleep, thoughts keep running around like a hamster on a wheel. Some knitting related thoughts frequently pop in for a visit. I appreciate the comments on my prior post. I already have some sock yarn waiting to be knit into gloves, and several batches of yarn "that I can knit into a scarf...", so the 2 options I considered were a shawl and a sweater. I also have started to accumulate laceweight yarn, so I decided against a shawl, so that is why I decided on a sweater. Someone might choose to point out that I have several batches of yarn already that are waiting to be knit into sweaters, but really, how often does reality come into play when one is thinking of starting a new knitting project? I have just under 1000 metres of yarn, so there's no way I would get a me-sized sweater out of these 3 skeins if I knit with 2 strands of sock yarn together. After I wrote the post, it occured to me that I bought 3 small skeins of medium grey laceweight alpaca at an embroidery shop which had a small yarn selection in Paris (the name of which I did not take note) that would work well as the carryalong yarn. I can't find them right now (The Gambler tidied up the room where the bag was sitting one day this week), but I vaugely recall there being 600-800m in total. Ironically, the 2 fingering weight yarns are the ones with grey in them, whereas the sportweight is all greens, but I don't think the laceweight is going to alter the colour of the fabric THAT much (see above note re: reality). Besides, the alpaca will make the fabric a bit warmer, I didn't have any specific project in mind for the laceweight, and to tell you the truth, I'm not someone who would generally wear completely grey garments/accessories. I went to the shop on our last full day in Paris shortly after it opened , and I swear to god that I stood in front of the shelf which held this yarn in at least 12 colours (multiple shades of brown and grey, cream, white, and black) for a good 10-15 minutes, sniffling from my cold, trying to decide what colour I should buy. I'm sure that the little old man running the place thought that I was a crazy person. So I have decided that I will use this yarn to knit a Kaleidoscope sweater. For which I already bought not one but 2 different pairs of skeins of sock yarns. What sweet irony that one of these sock yarns is from Indigomouse, who had suggested that I just mix different yarns together when I ranted about a "sock yarn stash reducing project" which required one to buy more sock yarn. It's designed to have a fairly loose gauge, has minimal seams, but because it is a cardigan it will make it easier to change yarns every row. I will do some swatches to determine whether or not the combined yarns look like crap or not. Theoretically, I could change needles when I switch from sportweight to fingering in order to minimize the tension differences, but I probably won't. And a big thanks to my SP11 secret pal for the package I recieved this week! It contained some lovely deep red merino/silk laceweight and a copy of the latest Vogue Knitting amongst other things. I haven't had time to photograph it yet (I am blogging from the hospital - waiting to find out if a patient is going to be shipped to a hospital with a Neuro ICU, or if I am going to end up admitting her), but I have found some interesting patterns in the magazine. There's one section which has some pretty avant garde (i.e weird) designs, one of which is a "scarf with sleeves"(#26 - the asymmetrical wrap). I really like the way that the right hand side of the garment looks, and was thinking that it might work out to just mirror it to knit the left side, but after some time lying awake at night mentally going through my stash for potential yarns, I moved on to trying to figure out how something that is a rectangle would end up nipped in at the waist. Which was great fodder for the hamster. But the more I think about it, the more I think that those bastards the stylists just pinned it in back. 9 and a half hours until my on-call week ends.

The Cruelest Month

Forget April. I think that November is the cruelest month - at least in Blogland. We are less than 5 hours away from "NaOvEsWhaYoAchWhiStiWoSleMo" (National OverEstimate What You'll Achieve While Still Working and Sleeping Month) By the way - why is it "National" rather than "International"? Or does the "Nation" refer to the Internet Nation? What drives this lemming like urge to write a novel, knit a sweater, post/create art/(insert activity here) daily in November? Is it a last minute attempt to achieve something before the year is over (kind of like the last 2 weeks of summer vacation - "holy crap, I've wasted all this time - gotta do SOMETHING!)? I've made a commitment to blog daily (NaBloSoMo) during November, and had toyed with the idea of trying to knit a sweater during November (NaKniSweMo), but I think that the only way I will achieve that goal is to knit a baby sweater (which, it so happens is something that I had intended to knit for my new niece as a Christmas present), because I am working most of the month. Not to mention the fact that I plan to knit a scarf as a Secret Santa present for one of the nurses at work in time for the December 1st ICU Christmas party(who loves pink - a colour which is horribly under-represented in my stash), and there's this stitch pattern that I would like to design a pair of socks around, on top of my long list of projects that I want to start knitting RIGHT NOW! and the sockette/socks that just need to have the toes kitchenered shut and the UFOs that are hanging around, and I still haven't unpacked from Europe/packed my last knittyboard SP package/mailed my Ravelry Birthday exchange package/put away my summer clothes, and I should really get around to writing up the patterns for the socks I have designed on the off chance that someone might want to knit something like them plus it would mean that I could be one of the cool kids who is a "designer on Ravelry", and oh, yeah, there's still all of these cardboard boxes around the house that need to be unpacked from the move... I tell you...cruelest month. I'd close the post with a photo of Eiffel Sock #2, which is 75% completed, but the fates didn't get the "Hey - Ladylungdoc didn't buy any Halloween Candy, and The Gambler is going to be at Fencing tonight, so make sure that she has a quiet day at work and is able to get home in time to realize that her neighborhood is teeming with trick-or-treaters, and that her only option is to hide in the basement and hope for pouring rain to wash away the eggs" memo, and I am waiting for a transfer to arrive from another hospital. So instead, you can look at the pretty flowers:

Deep Thoughts

My week on call is almost over, and in the last 2 days I've had 8 hours of sleep (in 2 hour spurts), and I am so tired that I feel more dazed than sleepy. Why are there so many English words that do not obey the "i before e except after c or when it sounds -ay" rule? And does anyone else have difficulty spelling the word gague guage gauge, or is it just me? As I was driving home, I caught the tail end of some radio program which commented that "The children of these (chinese) children will have no aunts or uncles" since said children were only children. Which got me thinking about how so many North American families have only one child, and that one or 2 generations from now, many people won't have aunts or uncles or cousins, and what will it be like to grow up without someone with whom you have a bond that is not as strong as your immediate family, and different than the links you have to your friends, and maybe you are close when you grow up or maybe you are not so close, but they are among the few people in your adult life that knew you throughout your childhood and played with you on holidays after dinner. And does this mean that weddings will be attended by friends and not relatives because parents are the only relatives still alive?

Eureka!

I've figured out what yarn to use for the Candleflame Shawl: This yarn was a present from a patient. I was reminded of it today at work when I saw a gift of fruit and other goodies; looking at the card, I realized that it was from a patient who I had stayed up all night taking care of. At the time, I was sure that he wasn't going to survive, but he did, and was discharged home from the hospital while I was on vacation. He wrote "Thanks for saving my life" on the card. It's a weird thing to hear something like that. Because I didn't save his life through any superhuman talent; any other doctor with the same training that I have could have done so. It's like an airline pilot landing a plane - "just doing my job". I happened to be the one who was on call the night that he came in, that's all. But I still took home the basket that the goodies came in - it will be a great place to store yarn...

Is this all that there is?

I think I have driven by one too many Alpha Course bus shelter advertisements. Or maybe it's the babies that various friends and family are cranking out. Work, knit, blog, shop, travel ( not necessarily in that order) - keeps me occupied, but leaves me with little to contribute when sitting at a table full of mothers and grandmothers. We don't want to have kids, and I have never had any sort of urge to do so. To be honest, we don't really like kids. I don't know the exact birthdates of my nieces and nephew. Time keeps whizzing by at an ever accelerating rate; it would be nice to know what we are journeying for.

Pardon me while I have a nervous breakdown...

Yesterday's patient ended up arriving at 11:45PM, so I got home around 2AM, then we got up at 6AM to drive into Toronto to sign the papers at the lawyer's office. I am now nauseatingly tired, but keep getting my nth wind (I think n = 38 right now), so instead of napping this afternoon, I uploaded photos into Ravelry. See how this sari yarn is frayed? It kind of reminds me of my nerves right now. We got posession of the house today, and lugged 99% of our belongings from the rental house into Toronto to start the long arduous unpacking process. I found many things to fret about: I had to do an 847 point turn to park my car in our carport (it's off the backlane, and the garages/fences on the other side are only a few inches away from the lane.) We have to get a parking pass for The Gambler's car so that he can park on the street, but it's not entirely sure how long it takes to have the pass issued. It turns out that the house was only roughed in for Central Vac. The empty rooms look tiny (of course, in some cases this is no illusion - the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms are tiny). There is not loads of closet space, and I have alot of clothes. You know how on the current generation of makeover shows, the makoverers go through the makeoveree's closet and toss out the stuff that doesn't work for them? I wonder if you can hire people to do that for you in real life. Not a personal shopper - just a totally objective person who could say "That really doesn't do anything for you" with some modicum of authority. The closest I have come across was when a consignment store that I used to frequent sent out a mailing saying that they would go through your wardrobe with you and help you pick out the stuff to get rid of, and possibly consign some of it for you. However, I would be pretty suspicious that they might be more apt to tell you to get rid of something if they thought that it would sell easily. We have to figure out where we are going to put our recycling bins now that we have a galley style kitchen. And Thursday morning (my first day of commuting to work) I have to be at the hospital by 7 AM. But at least we have a great shower (The Gambler gave it a test-drive this evening). And we did have a chance to make some decisions where pieces of furniture will go. Several times I just laid on the floor to determine how tight of a fit things would or wouldn't be. Speaking of Ravelry(You may have forgotten by now that I did so in the first paragraph of this post. I like to combine tangential thinking with a habit of picking up a conversation where it left off, even though the other party in the conversation has since moved on with their life and has no idea what I am talking about), I was looking at my stats and realized that I now have 99 friends (an explanation for non-Ravelry participants: you can add someone to your friend list just by clicking a button - they don't necessarily have to approve of being linked to you. However, they don't necessarily have to add you to their list of friends. It's kind of the reverse of yearbook signing protocols). So the next person I add with be my 100th friend, which is one of those things that has somewhat artificial significance. I thought to myself - "Hey, I could add a certain Famous Knitter who I personally think has gone a bit overboard in the 'us and them' concept as applied to knitting". And then I laughed so hard that I scared Somerset (she and Greedo are part of the 1% of our belongings that remain in the rental). I kill me sometimes. And for those of you who are waiting with baited breath to see the soaked-in-water-and-then-in-salt-water-then- re-blocked Soleil: Hopefully tomorrow - I'm planning on wearing it to work, and will get The Gambler to take a picture of me wearing it when I get home. Wow. Home. I have a home again.

Blue Weekend

I did some travelling this weekend - Janis and her husband had planned a trip to Niagara-On-The-Lake to take in some of the Shaw Festival, so it was an excellent opportunity for us to meet. We saw "The Circle" by Somerset Maugham, and Shaw's "St. Joan". I am always surprised at how many "quaint little villages" exist in Southern Ontario, and mildly saddened by the fact that they depend on tourism to survive - nothing like turning the place where you live into a cross between Disneyland and a zoo. On the way down I stopped in Burlington and checked out Spun Fibre Arts - it's a great store; too bad it didn't open until after I left Burlington. Or maybe that's a good thing-they had a whole table of Malabrigo on sale. I managed to restrain myself and buy only 2 skeins, as well as this gorgeous blue Trekking yarn: I picked up some Pop Corn as well: I can't believe that she forgot the butter! I only picked up one skein because I couldn't think of a specific pattern to use it for. The swatch was knitted up at a worsted gauge, but I think it would work better being knit up as a DK. It's incredibly soft and light. I'm going to knit it up into the gift pouch from Last Minute Knitted Gifts; it's the perfect colourway for my Secret Pal. Since I knew that Janis wouldn't have a chance to stop at any yarn shops, I brought her a souvenir skein of Fleece Artist Sea Sock yarn. She gave me some Tiny Toes in exchange: The colours don't come out well on this photo - they are closer to this Silk Garden colourway: Which of course leads me to consider combining the 2 yarns together for some as yet undertermined project. I suspect that non-sock projects that utilize sock yarn will soon be all the rage - all that lovely sock yarn out there will need to be used eventually, and I know that I am developing the early signs of sock fatigue 7 pairs into the 12 I planned to knit for the year. I wonder what the next Big Knitting Thing will be - Lace? Colourwork? Mixing yarns? Felting? Felting Lace? The number of knitting books being published seems to be exponentially increasing. Forget SABLE, soon we will all have to-knit lists that we can never complete. It's kind of like advances in scientific knowledge - nobody can keep up with all of them.

A Gravitational Field That Absorbs the Light of the Sun Even though I have divided for the neckline and armholes... ...I appear to have entered the Black Hole of knitting. Only 72 stitches per row, but all of a sudden it seems that I knit and knit and knit, but the measuring tape doesn't show any difference. Two more days left here - today we attacked the "storage closets" and went through some boxes that never got unpacked from the last move...disheartening. We realized that I have a heck of alot of billing sheets that contain confidential information, and no means to easily destroy them (our shredder died). So The Gambler had a surreptitious bonfire on our secondary (gravel) driveway, with the garden hose at hand. (open fires aren't very popular around here) He thinks that he got about 1/2 way through them before it got dark. I went through my makeup/toiletry stuff while he was doing that; which brought home that I have gotten into a "don't bother putting any makeup on" slump. Not that I normally do the Tammy Faye thing, but I usually put on eyeliner, eyeshadow and lipstick when I go to work/go out. Makes me look less tired. I still have the blush powder that I wore to my highschool graduation - I have hung onto it because it is the perfect colour for my complexion, but come to think of it, I can't even remember when I last used it - I think at my wedding. In the last few months I have caught a few "makeover shows"; I can see the allure of having someone else come in and toss out what doesn't work for you. It's so much easier to toss something when you have absolutely no history with it. Theoretically this move is a chance for us to "start over", but in reality, it's just changing lanes. I've been spending lots of time on Ravelry; it's way more enjoyable than doing moving-related tasks. I am trying to focus on assigning projects to various bits of my stash. My numbers constantly surprise me - I have 19 knitting books that are in the Ravelry database, plus at least 6 or 7 books that aren't yet entered into the system. And I have FIFTY TWO yarns (not 52 skeins...52 different yarns!)entered into my stash database. And I still have more that isn't in there. Plus, one of the entries is "Regia Sock Yarn", which covers about 8 different yarns. I swear by all that is holy that I am going to devise some system to make yarn usage > yarn development. Sigh. And to add maudlin to melancholy, I miss the cats: Greedo was practicing for the smaller house. Downsizing can be a bitch.

Soleil Rising Still can't post a title. Even if I hit Edit Html. P.O.S. Blogger!Bah!! Spent several hours working on Soleil yesterday: Thus far, I've only twice had to change skeins midway through to minimize pooling. Actually, watching out for pooling has eliminated the "miles of stockinette boredom" effect. The Gambler watched the UFC pay-per-view last night, so I took the opportunity to do a swatch for Cochella out of Colinette Enigma: It's a thick/thin ribbon yarn, and is supposed to knit up at "heavy worsted" weight. The swatch was kind of wonky in that the thick portions kept overlapping. I think I am going to give it a try with these needles. I think it will be a good project to work on when I fly back to Ontario on Friday. I would definitely wear a bra underneath it, given the openness of some of the stitches! In the meantime, we are going through each room in the house, deciding what to toss. Always stressful; regretting having aquired something and not using it, guilt about throwing away something that is still useable, and panic that I might end up needing/wanting it at some point in the future. Speaking of guilt, I have pretty well fallen off of the wagon in terms of not adding to the stash in the last few months. I am hoping that keeping track of my stash and "to-do" list on Ravelry will prevent duplicate purchases and will enable me to match stash yarns to potential projects a bit better. I decided to upgrate to Flickr Pro so that I can get all my stash and WIP photos in there.

An -ity bitty post

Some musings of late: Synchronicity: Now it's understandable when similar themes are found in different blogland locales (say, several people posting a link to the same economic analysis of a particular yarn brand) - cross pollination is endemic online. But on Saturday I was listening to DNTO while driving, and I heard Sook-Yin Lee interviewing Heather Mallick about the sinister term that online commentary can take. Heather mentioned a female blogger who had very sinister threats/photoshop images in response to a discussion about erasing online comments (and it is interesting to note the tone of most of the reader feedback notes given the content of her article). On Sunday night, when I finally had a chance to check bloglines, I saw a post that was discussing the same female blogger which had been posted on Friday. Since I usually don't read the newspaper, watch TV (other than far more CSI episodes than is healthy in the last 3 months, as well as innocent bystander exposure to whatever "sports" show The Gambler is watching), or listen to commercial radio, my 2 windows on the world are generally the Internet and CBC Radio One. So it always surprises me when I come across the same themes in the different spheres. Serendipity:I made it to Thursday Night Knitting at my temporary LYS last week. The owner had ordered volume 5 from some pattern book line, and ended up getting Volume 5 of an Elsebeth Lavold pattern book instead. I thumbed through it, and there are several patterns that I like, and I have some Hempathy yarn, as well as some Jaeger Trinity that would work perfectly for the patterns. So I am going to buy that pattern book for future use. I have less stash guilt when stash yarn is actually "assigned" a potential project. Granted, many of these potential projects have been sitting around waiting to be knit for quite some time... Anonymity: The Gambler has joined the Facebook world. It works well for him, because many of his classmates from high school are on it, and he's made contact with many of them (plus, he is one of those people who likes to mantain stong ties to people from his past, even if it is at the exclusion of making new ties with people from the present). I joined facebook, but really don't plan to spend much time on it (partially because I do not have the urge to chat about things that happened when I was a teenager, and because there are very few people from my past with whom I have any great desire to reconnect. When my life changes, many of my aquaintances fade away, and I focus on finding new connections.). I like blogs and blogging better. Part of the reason that I prefer blogs to facebook is the fact that you can maintain the illusion of anonymity. Now I realize that I do post pictures of myself and The Gambler, and that I discuss enough details about my life that it's possible to track me down, but it's not the same as posting my name, my high school, job, university degree etc. It's interesting to see the degree to which people maintain their privacy while blogging. Some use their first names, some have pseudonyms. Some people won't publish photos of themselves or their families, others will post photos of themselves but not their families, and others will post photos of anything/anyone in their circle. I sometimes wonder if I should be asking permission to post photos that I take of others - granted, about 95% of the photos I post are cats/scenery/knitting, or some combination of cats and knitting. Confidentiality - part of the reason why I think about things like asking for permission to post photos on my blog is because maintaining patient privacy has been a hot topic in the last few years. Some rather silly situations can arise based on new legislation - for instance, I technically have to ask permission of a patient to send a note back to the doctor who originally referred them to me. I was thinking about this the othe day when I had to order an HIV test on a patient. I need to get permission from a patient or his/her representative in order for an HIV test to be done. The result is then mailed to me, and is not to be a part of the person's permanent chart. There are no such constraints on other infectious diseases that can be sexually transmitted. Test for Hepatitis C, syphillis, herpes, gonorrhea - no problem; I can do that without saying a word to the patient. Granted, 20 years ago, getting a diagnosis of HIV infection was a) a death sentence and b) could make someone a social pariah. But it's a totally different environment today - we can't cure HIV infection, but therapies are much more successful in controlling the manifestations, and I read an article in a woman's magazine about a young woman "living with HIV" which named her, featured several photos of her, and mentioned the city she lives in and the type of job she holds. (Not saying at all that fear and misunderstanding about HIV infection don't exist - sadly, they do) Yet still we treat HIV testing with kid gloves. And I doubt that will ever change. Anyways, more photos next post. I promise. Ruth: You asked about the sock pattern - it's my own design, based on a cable pattern that I found in my Harmony Guide to Aran Knitting. Short row heels and toes.