I'm sick again. The same sore throat thing that plagued me a few weeks ago. At least I still have all of the medicine stuff I need, and this time I'm being really good about all the inhaling and tea-drinking and gargling, so I hope it will clear up a little faster.

The good thing is that I'm spending the weekend on the couch, knitting. I've made serious progress on the "Bayerische Socks" by Eunny Jang, the first heel is turned already. Also, the collar of the Weekend Pullover is almost finished, which means all that's left to do is the arm and side seaming. I could be wearing it next week! As far as I can tell, it's going to turn out beautifully, and amazingly soft. I think this could become one of my favourite sweaters.

In other good news, my book-podcast (Buchbesuch) is getting a lot of positive feedback, and we even have our first fan! She called our intro-jingle "addictive." I'm having a lot of fun with this podcasting thing, I'm seriously considering starting a personal, more generally themed podcast for all the stuff that doesn't really fit the knitting podcast. Now I only have to figure out how to live on 3 hours of sleep every night ...

I have a PodShow+ page now, you can find it under annkari.podshow.com. PodShow+ is basically a community site for podcast listeners, where you can tell people a little about yourself and share your favourite podcasts. You can group podcasts into channels, and also listen to podsafe music there.

Check it out, it's fun!

I've taken up walking again. Only 30 minutes a day for now, but I'll take longer walks and start running eventually. I'm taking a different route through my neighbourhood every day. I can't believe how many places there are within walking distance of our home where I've never been before! Yesterday, I found a beautiful garden with lots of beautiful wrought-iron plant pots and decorations. I should take my camera with me on these walks.

Because I'm easily bored, I take my mp3-player with me and listen to podcasts while I walk. This week, it's Adam Curry's Daily Source Code and his daughter Christina's Pod Save The Queen.

I bought a cheap microphone, and tested it with a friend's amplifier and Garage Band today. The sound quality is surprisingly good, compared to a lot of podcasts we've listened to during the past weeks. Oh right, we're planning on producing our own podcast. It'll be in German, so I won't post about it much here, but I'm pretty excited right now. :)

Sage over at Quirky Nomads has put up an impressive podcast about moral compromise today. If you haven't subscribed to her RSS feed already, go and do so now! It's always good stuff.

Today's episode reminds me how glad I am that I'll never have children and thus will never be in a position where I might be tempted to say things like “You try to raise them without violent toys, but in the end what can you do?” As I've just recently learned how hard it can be to stand up for your morals, I'd rather not be responsible for the moral integrity of my offspring.

Wow. An artist who manages to fit the line "The proper plural of platypus is platypuses" into a song about Intelligent Design is either very talented or very crazy. I vote for the former. Deirdre Flint's podcast Podcast Fondue has me rolling on the floor laughing!

"Each episode, Podcast Fondue explores interesting and not so interesting topics - science, history, art, politics - and puts all the important information into three minute songs, so you can easily recall them when you hit that awkward-silence wall at a cocktail party."

Her music is great, too. Her website can be found here:
www.deirdreflint.com

I'm spending entirely too much time listening to hilariously funny podcasts now. And as if that weren't enough, tonight I'll be in front of the TV, knitting and watching the Academy Award show from 2am to 6am. Hopefully I'll be able to hide the lack of sleep from my LYS customers when I come into the shop at 1pm tomorrow.

We finally have a DSL flatrate with unlimited download volume. (Before, it was 3G per month.)

Now I don't have to use the university's machines to download all my podcasts, burn them onto CDs and take them home once a week any more. I guess I'll have to be careful not to spend too much time in front of the computer now.

Quirky Nomads is the PodCast I've been listening to today. The story of a family that said, "If the Republicans get any worse, we're moving to Canada." And then? They really did. Helped me not get too depressed over the tunika I'm trying to knit, which I had to unravel after I'd already knit up a whole ball of yarn because it was too wide. And yes, I did a gauge swatch, but apparently the stitch pattern gets stretchier the more stitches you cast on.

Anyway, I have eight centimetres in the correct width now, and I plan on spending most of tomorrow knitting, too.

While I'm knitting, I love listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Cast-On is my favourite podcast at the moment. Brenda Dayne's recordings are interesting and funny, and she plays great music.

In her eighth episode, Brenda mentioned LibriVox, where you can get audio files of books which are in the public domain. Everyone can record books, or just a chapter or two, and then upload them to LibriVox. How cool is that?

I'm downloading Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" right now. Maybe, if I find the time and someone with decent recording equipment, I'll record something in German for the project one day. If only the day had 36 hours ...