Powder 8 socks return

I wasn't entirely sure what to pick up after finishing the sweater. As you can see from my Ravelry progress bars, I could of course work on Mystery Wedding Project but...you know. It's boring. I do have a couple of projects languishing, one of them being my experimental socks that I dubbed the 'Powder 8' pattern (because it looks like it has little ski tracks running down the sides. Yeah, I like to make stuff up). I re-did one of the socks after I modified the pattern for the second one--and then had a knitting tragedy the finished second sock jumped out onto the floor of a commuter jet, unbeknown to me until I had transferred to another flight. After a brief mourning period, I ordered yarn of a 'complementary color shade' since the color I originally had was discontinued. I was glad to get anything close to the original color in the same type of yarn, because in fact the entire line of 'possum-merino' blended sock-yarns had been discontinued.

After all of this drama, I realized that I was freaking sick of the pattern, and the yarn, and socks in general and I took no joy in working on it. Back in the pile. Then I got this message about a month ago.

The only reason I hadn't made the pattern available is that I never had a full pair finished at once (although when I'm done with this one I'll have knitted a total of four socks) to take pictures with. I didn't start on it right away, but it stuck in my mind that I should get to work since one human being was interested. After the sweater, though, it was the logical choice. It was already about 1/4 done, and socks are the best knitting projects to travel with. I've made some progress...

I'm hoping to make some more progress on my flights home today. I had forgotten how small the Idaho Falls airport was. I arrived an hour early to find no one manning the Delta counter (a sign read 'Ring Bell for Service') and the security area completely deserted.

There was another sign reading "Security Area may not open until 45 minutes before your scheduled flight". I'll be damned. I haven't seen anything like this since flying to out of the Rockford, IL airport (which I would highly recommend--free parking) where the two people who checked me in also acted as the TSA and then the gate agents (but not the pilots, thankfully). Idaho Falls has a slightly bigger operation: 3 gates, instead of two.

Can we talk pitas for a second? More specifically, pita packaging. The lab I worked in the past couple of weeks didn't have a cafeteria, and in money-saving fashion (what my coworker colorfully refers to as 'dirt-balling it') instead of going out to eat every day I went to the grocery and picked up a bunch of snacky lunch type items to nosh on over the week. One of the items I grabbed was pitas.

Doesn't it seem weird to gear your food towards a particular gender? I've never considered different types of food to be manly/girly. I can see my husband picking this up at the grocery and thinking, "Hmm, this appears to be for women. Must have some chick hormone in it or something, better not get it." Isn't it bad business practice to alienate half of your potential customers? Just struck me as an odd strategy.