Extravayarnza

I think I may have mentioned before that I'm taking a technical writing course this summer. It is a really interesting class. One thing I really didn't expect was for my teacher to insist we write papers about what we do for a living. For me, that knitting. I'm writing memos, mechanism descriptions, business letters, all with a knitting theme.
For example I just wrote an extended definition of stitch gauge (like 4 pages extended) plus an instructional page with photos of how to knit a gauge swatch. Yeah, this is college! I am writing a report on blocking. This is luckily going to double as one of my requirements for Master Knitters Level 1.
Right now I'm writing a mechanism description on how a spinning wheel works.
Big bonus, all the papers get edited by a professional technical writer, who happens to also be a knitter. These papers are going to rock when I'm done with them. The question is what do I do with them once the class is over? Any suggestions?

I did actually find some time to knit today. I'm working on a new sock pattern that involves adding beads into the lace. There are only a few beads, and they are spaced really far apart, so pre-stringing them and pushing them along the yarn seemed impractical. I decided to try a beading technique I've used with large beads and bigger yarn. I think a few of you might be interested.

Materials:
A size 12 or 13 steel crochet hook
Size 6 seed beads
Fingering weight yarn

1. Place several beads onto the crochet hook.

2. Knit to the stitch you wish to place the bead on.
3. Transfer the stitch onto the crochet hook.

4. Move the first bead on the crochet hook onto the yarn and off the hook.

5. Place the stitch back onto the left needle.

6. Knit that stitch and continue on with the pattern. Later on it should look a bit like this.

This works really well if you are just adding a few beads here and there. It also has the advantage of not needing to now the exact number of beads you plan to use before you start knitting. The beads also sit squarely on the stitch and will not move around on the knitting. When the beads are pre-strung they sit biased and could slip over to a different stitch.
I know many knitters prefer the smaller size 8 beads on socks to help keep the weight down. I did a quick check using a size 13 steel crochet hook and I had no problems getting the bead onto the yarn.
The size 6 bead is to the left and the size 8 seed bead on the right.