This is for the birds

When I came into the lab on Saturday, a male mallard duck was just sitting in the parking lot. Hanging out. I grabbed my camera phone and took a picture, however it looked great on the screen, not so much on my computer. For some reason when I sent the message to myself it reduced the image size. Anyway here is the crappiest photo ever



I have gotten to the heel on the Trekking socks. I am using Judy Gibsons generic toe up pattern, and am having a difficult time with the heel. It just doesnt' look right. Part of my issue I think is the working number of stitches that I have is 104, her chart only goes to 80 so using ratios and patterns (I actually enjoy math) I know how many sts should go in each blank. However I am confused as to the set up for the heel. I am going to give it one more try this evening and hope that it works. If it doesn't work out, then I will rip back all of the gusset increases, knit 5 cm more, and do a short-row hourglass heel.
I have done a toe up- heelflap sock before - however that pattern must be in Canada since I can't find it in any of my paperwork here. Being spread between two countries is not fun.

I haven't been knitting (or blogging) as much as I would like since several things are going on with my thesis that is taking up more of my time energy than I would like.