Last week's FO and linkmania

G'day all!

Blogger is being totally whacko at the moment. Half the blogs I look at have been flagged for objectionable content (including my own coloradoan dreaming/victorian on the move, though I did link to a piece about keeping the bush natural) but like Bea's blog? Come on!

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and wave as I run around trying to finish things and tidy things and get everything ready for our trip.

Last week I had an FO to show you but never got round tuit... DH's new socks.

These are knitted in Crazy Zauberball (details on Ravelry). The yarn is fairly typical of German sock yarns in its feel but has been spun in such a way that one ply is "rainbow" coloured and the other ply goes through orange, red, green, blue and brown (in the yarn I used).


(Pretty much every pic of thse was fuzzy - no idea why!)

I used a 5 X 1 broken rib - 5 X 1 cos at the top you can used a 2 X 1 rib.


I did mention I knitted these toe up? And used a slip stitch heel.


I used a variant on Cat Bordhi's upstream sock architecture.


I am really glad that I am not a control freak who has to have matching socks cos I think I would've gone through a number of balls trying to matchy matchy the socks.

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Now on a totally different topic, some of you may remember that I am on a gluten- and dairy-free diet (which is causing no end of angst given I'll be going to the land of the croissant soon and then to the land of beer, bread and sausages). Some researchers have found that some genetic markers encode part of a cell signalling pathway that is involved with both cancer and inflammatory diseases. (A cell signalling pathway is one where the receptors on the cell's surface trigger a response inside the cell which then tells the cell to start doing something, like turn on the production of a gene that tells the immune system to ramp up its defences.)

Another marker of coeliac disease, HLA-DQ8, is associated with a range of autoimmune diseases. Moreover, one of the most respected coeliac researchers in the world, NZ's Dr Rodney Ford, believes that coeliac disease is a neurological disease - it has effects on the neurological system before any gut damage is seen. This relates to other autoimmune diseases and also to things like autism, where some children are found to improve on a gluten free diet. He suggest it should be called The Gluten Syndrome.

Speaking of genetics, this is an interesting discussion on 50 genetics ideas you really ought to know. (I just tried to spell ought with an a - aught, which has a rather different meaning.)

Finally, we've been enjoying a bit of music by Linsey Pollak with some youtubes here. This man makes music out of the most unusual things - we particularly like the bike saddle clarinet.

anon!