Podcasting and knitting

I've gone a bit wild in downloading podcasts since getting my pretty purple iPod for Christmas, but much like books on CD, they're a wonderful companion for my knitting time. Usually I'll watch a movie or TV show in the evenings once the kids are in bed, and knit along on whatever I happen to be working on. But during the day that's not possible, since my "movie tv" is their "Wii tv", so podcasts and audio books are the perfect solution. I can be in the room with the kids, but we're not competing with each other's volumes, I can be knitting and listening, and still pay attention to them whenever one says "Mom, watch this!", which inevitably happens constantly no matter where we are. My favorite podcast so far has been Kelley Petkun's Knit Picks podcast. I'd heard it in the past, but since I didn't have an iPod or iTunes, I never remembered to listen to it every week. Now I have over a year's worth of it to catch up on, along with Lime & Violet and a few others. I really think I could easily fill my 8GB iPod with just podcasts andaudio books! Listening to Kelley talk about her own knitting has gotten me interested in trying some new things, like steeking, dyeing my own yarns (which I've done lots of, but not in a while), and a few other things that escape me right now.

I have two finished projects this week, but since the weather has been crummy I haven't been able to take decent pictures of them. One has already been handed off to the recipient, the other is sitting here waiting for me to mail it to the birthday boy. They're both the same thing, pretty much, the first one having ended up too small which demanded a re-knit. Turn A Square hats from Jared Flood, in Chocolate, Khaki, Cream and Heathered Green stripes, a color combo that just sort of evaporated up from my wool stash, and I'm loving it. The hat was intended to be a birthday gift for my cousin Ethan, who turned 19 on 1/2, but it came out a smidge too small. This pic is the first attempt, modeled by my aunt MJ, who is about 8yrs older than me. She really liked the too-small hat, and after all three of her kids turned down my offer of the hat, she snatched it up, and it seems to fit her just right. The second hat turned out just right for Ethan, a college freshman who has a long way to walk to class across the chilly UMBC campus. I'll get a picture of that before I put it in the mail to him this week, but it looks just like MJ's hat only bigger. :)

Jason's Redskins socks came out wonderfully, and completed just in the nick of time to count as a 2008 project, the knitting having been completed 12/30, and all the ends woven in 12/31 in the afternoon! He wore them to the New Years Eve party we went to, and showed them off to absolutely everybody there, so it seems like they're a hit! I'm really proud of them, can you tell??

Final FOs for 2008: Dillon's Gryffindor Hat, Lucas's Slytherin Scarf, DW dishcloth, all completed in December. Click on their names to see the Rav project page.

New stash is likely too numerous to name, but that leads me to the next topic - my Yarn Diet. My best knitty friend Holly and I made a plan to knit only from stash for the month of January. I so badly need to stick with this! I did order yarn over the weekend for a project or two that I have in mind for the near future, but other than that, nothing new is coming in until Feb first at the very soonest.