FOs-- Socks!

I have a big deadline coming up in August so I think I've been subconsciously trying to finish second socks. This year, so far, has been all about socks, in fact. Check out the two pairs I've finished so far:

 This yellow pair are Padded Footlets from the Interweave Knits Favorite Socks book. I wanted to learn the method where the bottom uses two lengths of yarn but the top is still one. It's quite fiddly and I don't think I'm going to even try to adapt it for Cat Bordhi's Riverbed Architecture. The yarn was Opal 4-ply that I bought somewhere, the contrast color being some leftover Zitron Trekking HandArt in Tundra.

 This pink pair is Briggs and Little Durasport. I used the Wheat Ear Cable and ribbing where the knit was k-tbl. Afterwards, I reinforced the heel with some extra yarn. We'll see how it wears--if it's just as well as heel stitch, this is a lot faster to do so I may be in for a change.

I just peeked over to the Knitty site and saw these String Theory socks. I'd tried knitting Skew socks when they came out but they were too tight for my not-so-wide feet so they got frogged. I'm thinking of trying Skews again, but maybe I'll also try String Theory.

Sleeping Well

Have you heard of Palmpring mattresses? I first came across them in an LA Times article about mattresses. It piqued my curiosity--no "gassing" from the flame retardant chemicals, all natural and better for your back? Sign me up! But the price tag was a hurdle. Until now.

We had a queen in our bedroom and I'd ordered a queen-sized set for the guest room, which meant we needed another queen-sized mattress. At this point, The Man caved and agreed to buy the mattress of my dreams (how many people have a mattress of their dreams?). I'd wanted the cushy Puri, but The Man suggested the Colva, as a compromise. We also ordered a latex pillow top, to add to the cush factor.

Imagine my surprise when we opened up all the packaging and saw this tag:

Ellora?! Somehow I went from Plush/Medium (in the Puri) to Firm (in the Colva) to Very Firm (Ellora). A quick conversation with my environment rep helped solve things though: the mattress was just mislabeled. They said it should measure 9". It measured no more than 8.5". It really was a Colva though, with an Ellora tag. You could tell because you could feel the different layers on the side (latex, coconut coir, latex, coconut coir), in that there was no confusion.

So we still haven't been able to put our bed together because the past two rails they've sent have been broken in different ways (that's a different story), but at least our nice, new, environmentally sound mattress is here!

The Man wasn't sure it was going to be worthwhile, but apparently he's been waking up with no back pain since we've started using it. And that's a good thing.

DIY Egyptian Magic

I like Egyptian Magic, but I don't like paying $40/6 oz for it. So I was excited when I found recipes for it on the Internet. One formula said to use a ratio of 2:2:1 for olive oil to beeswax to honey, which is what I did here:

In the picture below, you can see the finished product (center), compared with real Egyptian Magic (left) and the last beeswax and olive oil lotion I made (right). That one also had coconut oil in it though.

The problem I had with this ratio was that it turned out very, very sticky. This morning I melted it down again and added another helping of olive oil (so now it's 3:2:1) and we'll see how that turns out.