Back to work after a fun Saturday

Yesterday, Linda and I took Duane to lunch and supplied cake and presents for her birthday.  We went to several of our usual favorite places to shop including Kaleidoscope where we all made purchases.  Duane bought a set of bookends she had been eyeing, I bought a beautiful trapunto style pillow with the outline of a chandelier and Linda bought a fab pink mid-century serving bowl and she finally broke down and bought the last of the three tile top tables that she had wanted.  This one has a black iron frame and the top is composed of black and green tiles.  Very pretty.  After hitting a few more shops, we had lunch at Mikey's and then headed back to Duane's for chocolate cake.  A fun day.
              

When I got home late in the afternoon, I finished a pair of slipper socks I knitted for my mother's birthday.  The pattern was very easy but I will NEVER use this type of yarn again.  It's called Red Heart Light & Lofty and, boy, was it a pain to work with.  It is incredibly soft and thick so the slippers feel great -- I tried them on before washing and drying them -- but this yarn has a tendency to split and I ended up with too many stitches, etc.  Ick.  I'm also including a gift certificate to one of my mother's favorite department stores with the slippers.    



Now, I'm concentrating on making more squares for the KasCare knit (or crochet) project to make blankets for orphans of AIDS.  My friend Barbara gathered together all of the squares we had finished last Friday and we had enough for one full blanket (60 squares) and most of another one.  I gave her the ten squares I had ready to go so now I'm back to making more.  I crocheted a quick one last night and I'm about halfway through another.  I've also been looking at more of the Amigurumi patterns that I mentioned a couple of posts ago.  I may make Amigurumi cupcakes for my three nieces for Valentine's Day.  There are so many cute patterns for these that it's hard to decide which one(s) to make.

Today, I spent quite a bit of time in my recording booth.  I need to finish up my latest LibriVox solo, Camp-Fire Girls in the Country by Stella M. Francis.  I had fallen behind on my self-imposed schedule due to catching a cold that knocked my voice out of commission for about 2 weeks and then the holidays.  I recorded 6 chapters today so my next step is to edit, edit, edit.  I also recorded the weekly poem for LibriVox.  This week it's "O Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!" by W.S. Gilbert, from the opera Patience.  That's one of the things I love about the weekly and fortnightly poetry readings -- you never know what someone is going to suggest.

I'll have an update on happenings at Iambik Audiobooks very soon -- probably this week.  We're starting to gear up again after the holiday season.  There is one book coming out that I mentioned in a previous posting that's a collection of crime stories by different authors.  I read a story for that one called "Bits and Pieces" which definitely fit the genre.  We also have another collection coming up and some more solos.  I'll post here when they've been published.