Winter preparations begin...

This past Sunday afternoon, rather apropos of nothing, since it was 75 and sunny, my roommate said to me, “Does your iPod ever get so cold it doesn’t play?” Actually, no. I have a nano and it fits in my pocket, but the roommate has one of those fancy, 160GB ones. Evidently it gets cranky when she traverses the city in winter.

In response to this meddlesome problem, I sat right down and knitted up this iPod koozie. It’s made of two types of wool, and I’m assuming that it will do for iPods what it does for the rest of us, namely, keep us warm and make us itchy. I offered add a flap closure over the top, so it would button or snap, but the roommate said, “I don’t need no flap.” Indeed. So the drawstring closure is a rolled tube made by purling the last 4 rows and feeding through two loops of braided wool. If anyone wants more detailed instructions, let me know.

Oh, and FYI Word of the Day. The design on the front of the koozie is called a phage, for those you who are curious. It was selected by the roommate and here is the explanation: “A bacteriophage (from 'bacteria' and Greek phagein, 'to eat') is any one of a number of viruses that infect bacteria. The term is commonly used in its shortened form, phage.” I think you have to be a biochemist to really be excited about bacteriophages.