Things have been busy since Christmas but during the last week I've finally found some time to sit down and work on a new pattern. I've had the idea for a Star Trek tribute sock for a while. Designing one was a bit terrifying though. I've never knit a sock, let alone designed one so I've made this as easy as I can for fellow sock beginners. It's knit from the toe up with a Turkish cast on and a short row heel. You can knit it in blue for Medical/Sci, like the example in the photo, red for Engineering or gold for Command. The silver stripes denote your rank and are based on the insignia from the 2009 movie. Instructions include the insignia for Captain, Commander, Chief Medical and Engineering Officers, Lieutenant and Ensign. There are also two sizes, ladies and mens.

The pattern includes a couple of yarn ideas and all the instructions you should need to make a pair of socks to fit you. The pattern is free to download. Just click on the link below and please let me know how you get on.

Everyone knows that the coolest bits of technology are those that owe their development directly to Star Trek and this week the British Metro newspaper dedicated two pages to a variety of inventions straight from the decks of the USS Enterprise.

Amongst the laptops that roll up into poster tubes and mobile phone wrist watches I was particularly excited to see that the Department of Homeland Security has developed the first Medical Tricorder however I was disappointed to discover that they've chosen to give it the very unimaginative name of the Standoff Patient Triage Tool or SPTT.

Now, in the heat of battle or the chaos of a mass emergency, how easy is it going to be to refer to the SPTT by name? It's probably going to end up being called the SPIT and that's not really what you want to hear from a doctor when you're lying a pool of your own bodily fluids,

“Nurse, fetch the spit!”

C'mon DHS, be good sports, make us nerds and triage surgeons everywhere happy. Call it a tricorder. ;-)