New project, and more weekend finds

It's blue, it's purple, it's Blurple, some lovely merino sock yarn I got from Stephania who runs Three Fates Knitting on Etsy. Now that the Dragon Breath socks are done, I cast on these using the Brainless sock pattern from Yarnissima.

I'm still waiting for the part where it becomes "brainless." The sock looks simple enough, but the pattern is making me feel brainless! Once I figure out what's going on in each section I can usually carry on from there, but it's getting from section to section where I'm going, "What? Um, where? How?"

Still, I only started these last weekend during a 4th of July barbecue, and finished turning the heel and doing up the heel flap and started on the leg this afternoon while sitting with the knitting group while trading TMI labor and child-rearing stories (always a hazard in any group where there are pregnant women and mothers of children of all ages). I hope no one else was listening too closely.

And now some new fiber-related finds on the net:

• For knitters who really do want to take their stash with them when they pass over to the great LYS in the sky, a company in Yorkshire, England, will create a wool coffin. Seriously. No need to worry about catching a chill when you're six feet under, and ultimately biodegradable.
• Show off your mad knitting math skillz by whipping up a knitted calculator. Maybe my engineer son needs one of these?
• Petrina in Everyday Life just finished a gorgeous Kiri shawl. Go have a look.
• For knitters with home orchards, Pickles blog has these adorable crocheted pear-shaped and apple-shaped branch weights to train your fruit trees.
• Needled blog has an excellent piece on the Scottish cashmere industry.
• Travelling this summer? Check out Knitmap to find yarn shops wherever you happen to be going. Alas, where I happen to be going is northwest Indiana where I'll have to drive over a hour to get to the only LYS in the vicinity.
• Megan at Knitting Like it's My Job has a great post on Kool-Ade dyeing while watching Pride and Prejudice.
• EurekAlerts has a summary of a research article on how rare "hair" sheep may be the key to creating better, cheaper medical tests in developing parts of the world.
• The world needs more knitting-related comics by people who know their knitting. Check out The Knit Princess for the newest knit-funny-fix.
• Joyuna has a link on her blog to the cutest knitting song with ukulele accompaniment.
• So suppose you've admired lace shawls for a while now, and thought about making one, but you don't know how to wear a shawl without looking like the stereotypical knitting grandma. Instead of skipping the whole shawl-knitting thing, take a look at the Wearing Lace Shawls video on the Knit Picks site.
• And finally, someone linked a little windmill to an antique sock-knitting machine and made a wind-powered automatic knitting machine. But what's this "tedium" they're talking about when it comes to knitting? And who needs a scarf that long?