It's a Good Thing!

Every once in a while, I sit in waiting rooms at the hospital, at the doctor's office, or any other place someone needs to me wait. Most of those times, I take handwork with me, but more often as not, the time just doesn't warrant it. So on those days, I try to find a magazine to read that I normally don't pick up. Yes, I have to admit that I've read Argosy, Backpacker, Horticulturist, and Outside many times. They are always interesting, since they aren't magazines I see in my own home!

Last week, during one of these short waiting periods, I picked up an August issue of Time Magazine. I had already read everything they reported about, but in the "interest" column, I found something really cool!

It was titled "7 Cool Sites You'll want to Bookmark. I've studied a few of them, but the two so far that I think are great are:

Pandora.com
"Type in the name of your favorite band, and within moments, the site will be streaming a radio station, featuring songs from that band and similar ones, to your desktop through your browser - no registration and no downloads required. You can fine-tune the playlist by using the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. It's a nifty way of discovering new artists who sort of sound like the bands you already like, and of becoming a font of music knowledge at parties...courtesy of the Music Genome Project.

Zunafish.com
Sign up here to trade DVDs, CDs, paperback books, video games and DVDs. The only money that changes hands is the $1.00 fee you pay the site for each successful trade. It's easy to post an item: you simply plug in identifying information - the site walks you through that - and the Web Elves produce a full listing. The sole limitation - apart from those of your collection - is that you can only swap like items (CDs for CDs, books for books, etc). So choose a screen name and start swapping.

I haven't had a chance to explore more of them, but you can see the full annual list of Time's 50 coolest websites, including shopping, cooking and parenting blogs at Time's website.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures of all my pincushions as everyone else was showing them. I have a lot of them - two on each side of my design wall, 4 catcher bags with pincushions, 2 Ewesful pincushions, and a couple of chickens. I also have a patriotic one, sort of like a large tomato. I try to keep my pins sorted between them, but that is a futile exercise! I have two wool pincushions, both of which were gifts. One of them fits perfectly in my "carry along" kit, and here is the other one. I think I love them both the best!