Unwound

Kelli Robinson's Unwound is an inspirational podcast. In fact, her podcast has inspired me to review all knitting podcasts.

Kelli is a lawyer in Birmingham, AL. Her voice is very soothing, and she expresses her ideas and thoughts with clarity and ease. Her style is very laid-back, and I find it to be very relaxing. The title 'Unwound' is very appropriate.

The structure of the podcast is usually the same from week to week.

Kelli opens with a mini-monologue about what the content of this podcast will include.

Then, she gives thanks to all of the people that have helped her in any way. I really appreciate the thanks part of the show, because it starts the podcast out positively.

Next, she usually plays a tip from someone other than herself. She moves on to talk about her knitting and where she is with something. This is really great, too, because she shares her questions and uncertainties, and it helps me to feel like I am not alone in my questions.

Then, she talks about some knitting-related thing that she has researched. As a lawyer, she clearly has excellent research skills. She explains this thing in every possible way, and really understands what she is talking about. She conveys the information clearly and efficiently. The variety of topics covers yarn shops to charitable causes to knitting lingo and techniques.

Then, she has a special segment. This week, she had a listener from Japan submit an essay about the beginnings of her very interesting scarf.

And then, she does my favorite thing of all. She plays the listener poll feedback. This is when I get to hear voices from across the country and world talk about various knitting-related subjects. It is astounding to hear the variety of answers people give, and the variety of voices on the other side of the earphone. I participated in this last one, so we'll see if I make it on! :o)

Finally, she wraps up the show by introducing the listeners to three new books. She hasn't necessarily read the books, but she talks about them (basicially covers what you could read on the back of the book) and offers them in her drawing for others to review.

Overall, Kelli's podcast is really great. At this point, there is absolutely nothing I would do to change it. Occasionally, I feel that the listener call-in portion of the show is a little long, but I think that will change with Unwound's growing popularity.

5 out of 5 stars

I have a theme

I have been thinking about this tiny blog for quite some time... Considering what to do with it. I don't post about my knitting very much on my other blog, but it seems awfully redundant to post twice about the same things going on, with a little knitting thrown in on this blog. So, I have realized that I would like to review knitting podcasts on this blog. There are so many of them out there, and so few of them are any good. I have some really strong opinions about the types of knitting podcasts there should be, and what qualifies as a "good" podcast, in my opinion. Obviously, everything I say here will be in my opinion, and obviously, I am not the foremost reviewer of knitting podcasts. Rather, I hope to be helpful to those that may be searching for good content, but don't have the time to whittle through the dozens and dozens of podcasts available.

To open, I will state my philosophy of knitting podcasts (note: this is subject to change).

First, a knitting podcast should be mostly about knitting - it's history, good yarn and/or pattern stores, book reviews, etc.

Second, a knitting podcast should be enjoyable to listen to. Quite a bit of background noise and annoying "chatter" should be kept to a minimum.

Third, a knitting podcast should relate to and involve the listener as much as possible. Be it an essay series read and written by listeners or poll questions asked by the host and answered by the listener. This is very important to the vitality and variety of the podcast.

Those are my current criteria by which I judge whether a podcast is worth the time. I am really looking forward to reviewing all of the wonderful and not-so-wonderful knitting podcasts out there! I hope you can take some nugget of information from my reviews.