Inspiration from Panera

Renee, Kim, and I went out to Panera last night for dinner, knitting, and general poking fun of all the sorority girls who were cramming for finals in a crowded, loud place. I never understood that since I need at least controlled quiet in order to study. It was a good evening and it inspired Sweeperman part 2, finishing a sweater sleeve, and a few other writing and knitting things.

Anyways, here's the finished sleeve:I mentioned yesterday that I would be giving a Kindle full-review here today. So, here goes:

The Kindle is a bit pricey and this is my one big minus against the unit. It's 400 bucks. For your 400 bucks, you get the Kindle, the carrying case, charger, and USB cord. The case is OK, but I don't feel like it's quite secure enough for my 400 dollar baby, so whenever I show it to people, I generally take it out of the case so that it doesn't fall out on them while they are holding it over a floor.

As far as specs go, the thing can hold 200 normal sized books on just its base memory. I found that loading a bunch of books on the base memory that are picture-heavy slows the unit down quite a bit, so it's better to go ahead and get a memory card (SD slot) and put the books on there. It takes between 1-2 seconds to turn a page on the Kindle unless it involves pictures. If there's a picture on there, it's going to take a while to load. This is my biggest pet peeve about the Kindle, but it's not unbearable.

Small knitting charts show up well on the Kindle if they have been converted to Mobipocket. It's a free software to download, so it's not difficult to change it over. The Kindle does have a picture browser on it as well, so you could always save smaller charts to a jpeg and have them show up as well.

Overall, the Kindle is a very nice product. If you're not planning on being overseas for a while like I am, it might be worth waiting to see if they work out some of the bugs in the next generation. If you can't wait though, you won't be disappointed. It's well worth it and I keep unlocking some of the easter egg features each day. So far I've unlocked GPS, Minesweeper, and thanks to Ravelry, the scroll feature so now I can knit and read at the same time.

Knit on...