Knitting in the "palm"

For a "mother earth type, back to the lander, fleece sniffing spinner" admitting that you "love"  a piece of technology is kinda difficult, but I have to be honest and say that, far into its 3rd year, I still love my Palm TX.

My first excuse reason for buying one was that I needed to be able to still check on orders, conduct business and work on my publications while on the road (mostly back and forth to Mom and Dad's and traveling to gigs with JB)

It needed to be in a very portable format (hauling a laptop into the waiting room when taking your parents to the dr. in tennessee is inconvenient and just plain weird looking) I convinced myself that I could get a whole lot of work done on it while waiting...little did I know that it would be mostly knitting work.

Back then, there were more free wi-fi spots than there are now (at least in TN) and keeping up online was easier, but over time, my palm has evolved into a beloved, glorified extra brain.

It does several things really great for me, and the one thing that is so fabulous about it, I didn't even count on when I first got it.

• First...I can knit from it! with a simple "sync" into it is dumped the lace pattern, cable pattern, sock pattern, or whatever I am currently knitting..I don't ever lose my place, because with a tap, the cursor is at where I am at...if I have to turn it off, I can mark my spot with an symbol and easily pick up where I left off and erase the symbol. Since my palm goes where I go, and it takes a 2gig sd card,  I have loaded it with lots (and lots) of patterns that I have been meaning to try at my disposal (it has a search built in that will pull up exactly what you are looking for in seconds. This is an instant on, instant off sort of thing, no booting involved, so you can slap it open like a book and start knitting, toss it back in your bag when you get interrupted...have yarn, have needles, have palm, will travel!

• Second, it really has done what I had hoped, it has helped me design. I have a draw program installed, and I can sketch out ideas for vests or socks or color patterns, etc, sync them up and refine them later. I can knit on the road and write patterns as I knit and not fear losing little scraps of paper with important gauge notes or row counts on them, because everything is all in one place..amazing!

• Back in daily life, as a flexible calendar/agenda it helps me keep track of what I am supposed to be doing during each day. I can set alarms for going to the post office in time, starting the rice, whatever, In the evenings, I look it over, and can rollover things I didn't get to, delete things I must have been nuts to think I could accomplish, and make plans for a better day for tommorow, all in a little black box the size of a deck of cards that lives in my purse/knitting bag that I can't lose, because I have little sweet ignorable alarms set to go off daily that help me find it (and my purse and car keys) if I misplace it.
• It acts as an amazing, flexible goup of shopping lists, post it notes and little reminders...I have shopping lists for stuff that must be gotten today(!) like dog food, stuff to get when I go the "big city" that cant be gotten around here, and a lust list (that, no surprise, is made up of yarns, and seeds and tree seedlings)
• Another thing it does that  I didn't count on,  it has been a great garden/climate diary..when I made little notes in the calendar the two years previous about planting this or that, or soaking those or these seeds, or seeing this or that bird, I didn't realize that the next, and the next, year they would show up on that date as a reminder and a comparison of the weather and seasons.
• Recipes! I cook from it too, and store a database of my current garden seeds, successes, failures, etc.