Another rock in the pond

Yes, I've dropped another rock into the pond of cyberspace, stealing valuable bandwidth for my own personal blatherings. :)

That is to say, I've joined the very cool community of Ravelry - go here to see my (new, just getting started) page over there. And, in order to take full advantage of the cool features there (and oh my, are there cool features there!) I had to set up an account on Flickr also - which is here. So I guess that's two rocks in the pond! The Flickr page only has knitting photos (unless I had something else in my WIP / FOG folders, which I shouldn't have, but wouldn't surprise me). I have to figure out how the tools work on the two sites, but I think Ravelry will be a more effective means of tracking projects, stash, etc. than what I've been doing here. Which is not to say I won't be blogging here - oh no! I'll still be here yammering away. But the Ravelry site I think will be more for tracking and here more for yakking. So to speak.

So, some yakking. For months now I've been reading about Cast On: a podcast for knitters. I even went to the site to download a few casts, but being the way I am, I wanted to start at the beginning. So I sent Brenda an email and she sweetly provided me a site to download every one, from the very beginning (I was pretty happy that she bothered to answer the email, actually, sometimes people don't. But, as I'm learning, Brenda is very VERY cool.) And so I downloaded a whack (well, ALL) of them into iTunes, and there they sat.

Until this morning, when I had many chores to do and I felt like having some company (Peter was off doing his own thing - it happens sometimes, we are separately but jointly productive that way). I loaded up a bunch of episodes on the shuffle, and away I went. And I listened. And I laughed. And I can honestly say I was flabbergasted by what I heard - not in a bad way, but it just wasn't what I thought it would be (what that is, I couldn't say, but it wasn't.) Brenda is funny. Her Addi turbo light-saber sound effect makes me giggle, EVERY SINGLE TIME. Brenda is musical - or, at least, has fabulous taste in music, all from unsigned artists over at (I'll mess this up I know) - Podsafe music? Something like that. Wonderful artists, gorgeous songs. Brenda is a storyteller. She has a very pleasant voice and a lovely cadence, and her "essays" are like kitchen-table (ok, pub table) anecdotes. Brenda is generous - she highlights other podcasters and encourages anyone with something to say to step up to the mike.

Brenda is my new hero - well, for today anyway - the one thing of value I learned from my ex-husband was the SubGenius concept of a "Short Duration Personal Saviour". You know, just the person to get you through whatever situation you're in at the moment. Today Brenda was my ShorDurPerSav, and I thank her for that. Now, I will undoubtedly spend the next few Saturdays/Sundays/evenings (TV's all reruns anyway) catching up between episode 9 and .. 50? Oh boy, I got a way to go. I love the show, and while listening, I had an idea hit me. The music she plays, some of the tracks I wanted to write down the artist and go hunt them up and buy their music and... then I stopped. And I just enjoyed it, in the moment, without needing to "own" it. Serendipity in listening, letting go of the urge to possess. Interesting ...

Ok, enough babble. I also finished a hat today, which as usual looks crappy via my camera but Peter really likes it:
It's Patons Shetland Chunky, two shades of blue in a 2x2 rib from cast-on to crown. No pattern, just big enough to fit his 21 1/2" head. He says it makes him feel like Jesse James. That's pretty sweet, in a Discovery-Channel-Nerd kind of way.