I was so bummed that I woke up with a sore throat and headache yesterday and had to cancel my plans to visit Metalliferous for the last crafty shopping trip of 2006. Since about two-thirds of the people I’ve seen in the last week have been sick, I guess it’s kind of inevitable that I’m coming down with something now too, so I stuck close to home and didn’t leave the neighborhood at all — just crossed the street to get some soup. Oh well, I’ll be back in New York in the spring and I will definitely be making the rounds of all my favorite stores again then. And at least my immune system waited until after our shows were done, so it could have been much worse timing-wise.

In the meantime, in lieu of actual crafting, I’ll be listening to one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Sister Diane’s CraftyPod show from last November: Making Stuff When You’re Under the Weather. If you haven’t heard this one, it’s filled with craft projects to make when you (or someone you love) is sick — via cooking, sewing, and aromatherapy. Plus Diane has the nicest, most soothing voice in the world. Sure, I’ll admit that I’m biased — she runs the fabulous Portland Church of Craft and she married me and Andrew last year, so of course I adore her. But regardless of all that, her craft blog is unparalleled and her podcasts are amazing.

If you’re not sick (lucky!) you should definitely cruise the CraftyPod archives anyway — I especially like Oddball Crafts, which is a fun catch-all, but there are ten other categories of her 40 podcasts (and counting). In case you’re new to all this stuff, she even has handy what’s a podcast??? and how do I subscribe? FAQ pages.