I’ve been reading the blog Weekly Geeks for a while now. The concept behind it is a thought-provoking, weekly literature blogging meme.

Last week’s post asked readers to share “a podcast [or three] you love, preferably book related, but not necessarily so. Give us the link, of course, and share with us details about that podcast and why you enjoy it so much.”

I have enjoyed podcasts, which are similar to online radio shows available for download, for many years and have listened to a variety of them. Some are done by single people. Others have a group format. Some are actual radio broadcasts, while others record from their living rooms. Their foci range from knitting, food, and books to baseball, old time radio programming, and music.

For those who are interested, here are several of the podcasts I download (and listen to) regularly:

1. The Writer’s Almanac
   You might be familiar with this 5-minute segment if you listen to NPR during the day. Hosted by Garrison Keillor, it offers listeners a few literary “this day in history” highlights and concludes with a poem, often from modern poets. This is a great podcast if you have just a few minutes a day to spare or if you want more poetry in your life.
2. CraftLit
   Hosted by crafter extraordinaire Heather Ordover, CraftLit provides public domain classics read aloud (often as a part of Librivox). Heather, an English professor and former high school English teacher, starts each episode with a bit of crafty talk before moving on to the analysis of the previous week’s reading and a preview of the current episode’s material. We’ve read a variety of works this way so far, ranging from A Tale of Two Cities to Frankenstein to our most recent novel, The Scarlet Letter. Whether I’ve read them before or if they’re new-to-me, I almost always enjoy and learn from listening to these weekly podcasts.
3. Stash and Burn
   This podcast, hosted by San Francisco residents Jenny and Nicole, purportedly exists to help knitters work their way through their overflowing stashes, but instead is really just bimonthly love song to friendship and yarn. I like to listen to certain podcasts at certain times: CraftLit while I’m knitting and The Writer’s Almanac while I’m getting ready for work or on my way to the metro. Stash and Burn is my dishwashing podcast. Nicole and Jenny make excellent company while I’m doing tedious late-night chores, and I greatly appreciate their laughter and camaraderie.

I also enjoy and recommend several other podcasts, including Cast On, Quirky Nomads, Sticks and String, and The News from Lake Wobegon, a segment from Garrison Keillor’s popular A Prairie Home Companion.

What podcasts, if any, do you enjoy listening to?

Do you ever get into jags with your hobbies? Periods where you just spend hours and hours doing the same thing?

I’ve been on a reading kick recently and have been finishing books left and right. I get home from work and head to the bedroom to curl up with my latest novel. It’s not a bad thing (although Rudi might disagree), but it’s just odd.

Sometimes, I feel that way about knitting, too. I can feel a knitting jag off in the wings, waiting its turn. Right now, it’s just manifesting itself in a strong desire to wind yarn for upcoming projects, but I know that one day soon it’s going to elbow its way to the front and demand I pick up the needles and start casting things on.

How about you? Do you have obsessive relationships with your hobbies, too?

I had hoped to be able to show you today photos of Mum’s birthday present, completed and modeled, but that was predicated on having finished it. As it is, I am still knitting away, although she did gamely drape the unfinished shawl over herself Thursday night when I delivered it still on the needles. Last night I suggested that it was long enough to stay in place if I let her wear it with the circular needles attached and tied in a jaunty bow.

So, that project will be re-presented at Thanksgiving, when, hopefully, I will also have discovered a way to set the Blue Skies Alpaca Silk dye. Does anyone know if dunking it in a vinegar bath will ruin the silk? I’m going to poke around Ravelry to see if they have suggestions, as well, but figured it was worth putting it out there. How frustrating to spend money on supposedly high quality yarn and to come away from the experience with peacock fingers and a green shadow on the back of my ring finger where I carry the yarn for tensioning…

Instead, I will off you a photo of a green hat I finished back as a part of Single Skein September. I delivered it to Marshall (and Karen and Michael) over Columbus Day weekend, but forgot the camera, so you’ll just have to imagine how cute it looked on him based on how adorable it was on Barry:

This is Sprout, designed by Melissa Goodale and named for the little leafy lace design that decorates the body of the hat. It doesn’t show up as well on Barry’s head as it does on a baby’s because the dimensions are slightly different. Personally, my favorite bit is the little decoration just above the ribbing on the brim.

I bought the pattern as part of a kit from Hazel Knits at Sock Summit, specifically with Marshall (and Karen) in mind. I think the Hazel Knits Artisan Sock Yarn colorway is ShannyPants, although I’m not positive. I loved the yarn and would definitely work with it again. The semi-solid color just glowed, the yarn wasn’t splitty, and I felt like there wasn’t the halo that some of my knitting projects acquire from being stuffed back into my bag during commutes.

I knit the largest size, intended for the 6-12-month-sized head, which used up probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the 100-yard skein the kit included. Coming from a family of large-headed people, I figured it was better to size up, rather than hope the hat would fit what sized head the designer believed a 3-6-month old should possesses.

As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post, Mia had cajoled me to come out to Berryville earlier this fall. Unfortunately, it looked like there would be conflicts (an out-of-town friend in town for the marathon and a bike weekend away for Rudi), so I told her I probably wouldn’t be able to make it. Clearly, those two situations ultimately did not prove to be a sticking point, and when she heard I thought I’d be coming, Mia offered to give — yes, give — me a skein of her handspun yarn.

I’ve been watching Mia’s evolution as a spinner with interest for the last two years because we share a fondness for similar colors. So when she asked if I wanted some of the yarn she’d spun from Karida’s Neighborhood Fibers dyeing or something else, I told her that I trusted her implicitly and left it up to the will of the dyer.

And this — this! — is what she thought I’d like:

Does the girl know what colors I might like or what?!

The yarn is 144 yards of worsted weight yarn spun of merino and tencel. The tencel is what gives it that gorgeous sheen. It is eminently pettable, as both Sarah and Mia can attest to, since I walked around holding it like a cat so I could keep stroking it. I am nearly positive that it will become a cowl, because I’d like to keep it close to my skin, and because I think it will go fantastically with my pink corduroy jacket. If you have a favorite cowl pattern, please feel free to leave a note in the comments, as I haven’t yet decided on a design…

Check it out! Mia even was so sweet as to name the yarn for me!

Soft handspun yarn in greens and pinks and purples (and blues and yellows and whites) named Sprite. I just don’t think it gets better than that.

If you, too, think you might like the sorts of things Mia spins, she has an Etsy shop where, I believe, you can also buy her photos and hand-sewn aprons.

Thank you, Mia! I’ll be sure to share what your lovely yarn becomes!

These would be the yarns I bought. The Christmassy skeins are Stripey Sock from Beyond Basic Knits. The top one is the Vintage Holiday colorway. I can’t remember what the bottom colorway is and mine isn’t labeled because they were short skeins that she was selling at a discount. If I figure it out (or decide to bug Bette and ask her), I’ll let you know. But suffice it to say, I see some striped socks (or mitts or mittens) in my future.

The middle skein is from Crabapple Yarns, a merino-silk blend in the colorway Virginia Greening. (Crabapple names many of their colors after Virginia apples — and this was a new one to me. Apparently, though, it’s an old apple dating back to the 18th century.) The girls who run the company were very sweet and put up with Sarah’s and my indecision about which skeins needed to come home with us, even after the four o’clock bell tolled the end of the festival. In the end, this skein just cried out to come home with me, surprising all of us, since I’d been leaning toward the brighter colors all along. I’m not sure of how the silk will affect the longevity and fit of socks, so these may be destined for handwear.

(It didn’t occur to me until after Sarah and I were driving home that every skein I came home with had green in it. Different shades, but, still, green.

Remember how I said I’d donated hats to charity at the drive at the Beyond Basic Knits booth? There was also a drawing associated with that to win a skein of her yarn. I swear I wasn’t thinking of that when I entered Jenny’s hats, but merely of how nice it would be for someone to finally get to wear them. Yet I was excited to hear Monday night that I’d won a skein and doubly excited when it arrived on my doorstep Wednesday! (Great job, Post Office!)

This is her superwash merino/nylon blend in the colorway Bees in My Garden, which was a colorway she dyed up specially for her sock club.

Thank you, Bette. I love it!

After several days of grey skies and rainy weather, Sunday dawned clear and crisp — perfect autumn weather for a road trip. Sarah and I hopped in the car and pointed it westward to the border between Virginia and West Virginia, to a little town called Berryville, population 3,000. Our destination? The Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival.
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I am here and am hoping that regular blogging will return sometime this week. The trip to Salt Lake just took a lot out of me and I’ve been in a funk since our return.

It even got so bad last week that I took my brother’s advice and went out for drinks with friends. I ordered an alcoholic beverage — my first ever. But it was nasty, so my consumption was limited to three sips. (In defense of the drink, no one else seemed to be under the impression that it reeked of liquor. In fact, they kept telling me how sweet it was!)

But I’ve been occupying my time productively when not trying to acquire a new bad habit. I’ve done a bit of housecleaning and some laundry. I am running low on handknit socks, though, so a load of sink washing must move up on my priority list…

I’ve done a bit of cooking recently. We made a batch of Jenn’s tomato sauce last month and I followed it up with Mum’s recipe for baking tomatoes. Well, not so much baking, as preserving. Sort of… Tonight I baked an apple crisp as a follow-up to the delicious turnip soup Rudi made for supper. (Of course, I started it too late for it to be done before Rudi toddled off to bed, but I promised him he could eat it for breakfast if he wanted…) While in Salt Lake, we had a delicious pear coffee cake one morning at a cafe, and Rudi’s mom sent us home with a handful of pears (and plums and quinces and apples and herbs), so I may give that a shot sometime soon unless Rudi decides he’s going to start eating them.

The garden continues to give us petite tomatoes and the pepper plants all have flowers covering them. I planted a rather late crop of squash, so although the plants have come up, I’m not convinced they’ll make it to vegetable stage. Although our frosts come pretty late in the year, so who knows. A volunteer lettuce popped up from the spring’s harvest going to seed, and our chard remains ever faithful.

I’ve been knitting quite a bit, but not finishing an awful lot. I have one mitt and one sock done, so either half of me will be nice and toasty or I’ll have to switch it up and go the right sock/left mitt route and hope that keeps either side from too much shivering.

Reading has been more successful, although I think I failed to finish any of the three challenges I took on over the summer. Plus, I have gotten so behind on book reviews that I need to figure out a new way to handle them. Or just suck it up and crank them out and inundate you with reviews. Any thoughts on that? And I missed the National Book Festival while I was in Salt Lake, which just makes me crabby to think about…

I try to get out on the bike each weekend, but my progress is slow when I go on my own (and Julia and I have not been coordinating our schedules well lately…) Bike D.C. is coming up in two weeks, so maybe I’ll see if any of our friends are interested in signing up with me. I also should sign up for that yoga class I keep telling Elspeth and Julia I’m going to take. Maybe when I get back from our long Connecticut weekend. I have done more commuting on the bike this year than ever before, helped by the delays caused by the Red Line crash earlier this year. (They were completely necessary and understandable, but I had a way around them, so why not take advantage of my two wheels?)

Anyway, that’s my version of a catch-all catch-up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll offer you my reflections on the baseball season…