Koolsheep’s knit blog

Yes, I know this to be true. But at the risk of sounding like a walking advertisement, I just have to tell you that the combination of knitting, audible.com, and an iPod Shuffle has made me a very happy and productive person lately. I’ve always enjoyed a good book on tape while knitting, but since I work in such spurts, sometimes I don’t finish a book before it’s due back at the library. And plus, their selection is pretty limited.

So I started checking out Audibles site and was impressed at the variety of books, the fact that most of the recordings are unabridged and that they’re offering a 2 week trial period with two free book downloads. So I got Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees” (recently recommended to me by my sister Kathy), and Tom Wolfe’s new novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” I first tried downloading them onto my Palm Pilot, but the earphone jack on that thing seriously sucks. Every time I moved, the sound would cut out. So then I started researching MP3 players and found the Shuffle, which just came out last month and has a reasonable price tag, compared to a lot of other players ($99). And this thing is really tiny! It’s whole heckuva lot easier to stick one tiny chewing-gum-stick sized player and headphones in my knitting bag than a walkman and one of those big plastic cases full of 20 cassettes. I considered one of those free iPod deals, but I’m much too concerned with instant gratification to do that. So Jules and I headed out to the Apple store yesterday and got mommy a little present

Anyway, so what have I achieved with my new little setup? Put the finishing touches on the Aurora soaker, which, thanks to the amazing generosity of some serious hyenas, brought in over $300 for the Fluff Factory auctions; finished Paige’s soaker, Spring Herald, whose colors she ordered to ward off the late winter blahs:

and finally, I finished up these patchy shorts, which will be up for auction at Midday Faire starting this Tuesday at noon CST

Next on my list is Jenny’s black butterfly soaker. Will hopefully make some progress on that this week!

I’ve just started knitting up Paige’s soaker (from the MDF tsunami fundraiser) and was really happy with the way the colors came out. Paige had asked for lots of pink and purple and some other Easter-y colors as well. Knitting with this yarn is a good antidote for our gray skies.

Also, I was admiring one of Isaac’s (storebought) sweaters the other day. I had always assumed it was a 1×2 rib or something, but upon closer inspection, I realized I’d never seen this stitch before. So, does anyone have a clue? What is this? It looks really cool.

Front:

Back:

I’ve really wanted to do more exploring of the parent-child animal theme. My favorite soakers so far have been the Giraffe Love and Wild Elephants soakers, so I thought I’d do another one. We were at the aquarium in Newport, KY about a month ago and had a great time watching the penguins play. Several of them were incubating eggs and the idea just stuck in the back of my head. I kept thinking about the daddy penguin I saw who swam to the bottom of the pool, picked up a rock, and carried it all the way up to the mommy who was sitting on an already large rock nest. He just wanted to do his part! So this is the soaker I knitted up and embellished:

You can see more pics at the auction. I have more animals lined up in my head for this series. Now I just need time to knit them all up!