New Zune, Socks, and Jello!

So I’m a bit of a gadget nerd. I love neat electronic gadgets. I wish I had more money to spend on little electronic gadgets. I had an mp3 player that was a few years old (I wouldn’t be caught dead with an iPod, but that’s just me) – and it died on me the other day. (It was an iRiver – a model they haven’t made anymore for some time now – it lasted me a good two/three years – it lived a good life.) So I looked at a new mp3 player. I fell in love with the Zune. I got myself a nice 80GB Zune with a pretty color screen. OMG the stuff this mp3 player does! I never knew what I was missing while I had the piddly 20GB iRiver that only played music and showed still pictures. This thing plays videos, video and audio podcasts, and stores the album pictures with the audio files so you see the album cover while the song is playing. It’s a thing of wonder! The Squircle pad is touch responsive – it’s a breeze to scroll through my 20+ gig worth of mp3 files. And the picture quality! We got the home a/v kit so we could watch videos on our tv from it – and promptly downloaded the whole season 4 of Battlestar Gallactica to watch (since we’re cable deprived). Zune to tv video is not too bad a quality either – a little fuzzy in spots, but not bad at all. Anyway – I’m really happy with my new Zune! I’m in gadget heaven. 🙂

I’m in the process of writing up 3 new sock patterns.

My Pavo socks are coming along nicely – I’m done with Sock#1 and working on sock#2 – hopefully I’ll have the pattern tweaked and ready to publish in a week or two. I started these the beginning of June for the SKA Sockdown (June’s challenge was to design your own socks). I’m really happy with how these are turning out.

I’m writing up the pattern for William’s Socks that I did a while back, too. I’m hoping to have that pattern done in a week or two as well.

And, I’m knitting another pair for SKA June Sockdown, too. I haven’t come up with a name for these yet. They have a leaf lace motif in the center instep and mini-cables on each side. The yarn is obscuring the pattern a little – I may knit a second pair in a solid color yarn before I finish the pattern up, I’m not sure.

I felt patriotic and made Red, White and Blue Jigglers for the boys for the 4th. They turned out well:

Here’s how you make them:

Prepare a red flavor of Jello as per the Jiggler instructions. Pour into pan and let set for about an hour. Then prepare lemon flavored (or unflavored) jello as per jiggler instructions – and then mix in a half a tub of cool-whip to that jello. Pour on top of the red jello, and let it set for another hour. Mix a blue flavor of Jello as per jiggler instructions, and pour on top of the white layer, then let set in the fridge until firm. Then cut into cubes and enjoy!

Anyways, I’ll drop in again soon! (Hopefully with a couple of patterns done!!)