Another Giveaway and Miscellaneous

Wow! I opened my email today, and there it was… Berroco sent me a notice about their newest giveaway, a kit for the Northampton Kerchief. This is much prettier than it sounds like it would be.

The photo doesn't have a link in it, you have to click the link in the paragraph above.

Pretty, isn't it?

I entered immediately! You might want to do the same, since entries have to be in by the 26th. You might also want to sign up for their newsletter, because the winners will be announced there.

**********************

More knitting content: If you design your own knitting patterns and/or would like to chart your own designs, here's some information about three knitting chart fonts! I haven't tried the fonts yet, but they sound like the best solution to charting yet. And I chart things all the time.

My previous best solution has been graph paper and pencil. Although that's probably the best while you're developing something, I really want to keep a permanent, and reprintable solution on my computer! Not to mention that you can publish it that way!

I'm seriously considering frogging almost all of the Celtic Sweater and redoing it! There are a few things that I'm just not totally happy with. I'm still thinking about it, but you may suddenly be hearing a lot more about it on my blog (with photos, I do have a new phone, after all).

**********************

If you use antibacterial soap, you might want to reconsider.

The ingredients that provide the antibacterial effect for these kinds of product can pose a severe threat to your endocrine and reproductive systems. Please click on the link to find out more.

There are millions of people in the US with hypothyroidism who have not been diagnosed due to the misinformation spread by drug companies to doctors who hang on their every word. I see people around me all the time with hypothyroid symptoms that are so bad that I notice them just from sharing a bus ride with them. And their doctors not only don't know enough to recognize these symptoms, but are actively testing those people with inaccurate tests and telling them that they don't have a thyroid problem!

And, by the way, if you have high cholesterol you do have a hypothyroid problem! Not maybe, not possibly, you DO! And I can almost guarantee that your doctor is unaware of this connection.

If you have high cholesterol and you do happen to be diagnosed with hypothyroidism by your doctor, make sure he prescribes natural desiccated thyroid (Armor Thyroid, Naturethroid or West Throid), which he probably won't want to do. This will fix the cholesterol problem (along with a lot of other problems) whereas Synthroid or other T4 medication won't fix those problems. But the drug manufacturers have told doctors to prescribe T4 medications so that they can sell lots of other drugs for cholesterol and more. Check this link!

I'm glad to hear that it's the FDA that's being sued. Maybe they'll learn to stop rushing dangerous drugs to market so that drug manufacturers can save money on the testing and start making money on drugs that are going to kill thousands. The drug companies won't learn. They make so much money on drugs that they feel they'd rather pay out some of it to the people they harm than miss all the profits. Unfortunately, the episode of Leverage that dealt with this problem is all too accurate! It's called The Double Blind Job, and I'm sure they'll rerun it. Watch for it! TNT (I think) has been airing reruns of Leverage on late night/early morning.

*********************

I was going to post this earlier, but we had a power outage last night, and somehow, it damaged the elevator. I was just about to start the post earlier today, and my computer went off. I panicked for a moment when it wouldn't start up again, but then thought to check the printer, which also wouldn't start, and after a bit of investigation realized that the stove didn't work, either.

I tried resetting the circuit breakers with no effect, and then they made an announcement about the problem with the elevator and said that they'd turned off the electricity in part of the building while they fixed it. It seemed confusing, because the TV and some other stuff, like the microwave and refrigerator, still worked.

Everything's back to normal now, though.

***********************

I love my local library, and read lots of books that I borrow from them on a regular basis. There's just no way that I could afford to continue reading without them.

But I ran into a bit of a problem with them this week. There are some books that are very popular, and I ran afoul of that this week with Meg Cabot's Airhead series. There are three books in the series: Airhead, Being Nikki, and Runaway, in that order. They have plenty of copies of Airhead, and I got that with no problem, but they don't have many copies of the other two books. Unfortunately, Airhead doesn't have much of an ending, it just segues into Being Nikki, so it's kind of like getting half of a double-length book. I picked up the first book, which my local library had on the shelf a week or so ago, and read it. I had the other two books on order, but had to wait because of the demand.

I checked on what books were in, and found that Runaway was sitting and waiting for me, but that I wouldn't be able to get Being Nikki for a while! Who wants to read the first, third and second books of a series in that order? And, since there are other people waiting for the last book, I can't keep it very long.

So, I broke down and bought a real, honest-to-goodness ebook copy of Being Nikki, my first ever real ebook! I got the Nook application for Android on my phone, and it seems to be working well. I'd rather have a real Nook ebook reader, though, because I can run down the battery on my phone pretty quickly when I read.

If you're interested in the books themselves, they are considered "young adult" books by the library, but a lot of adults are reading kids books these days. As I've said before, "A good story is a good story." The premise for these books is a little hard to believe, but if you can get past that, they're the usual top-notch writing that I've come to expect from Meg Cabot.

In the first story, Em dies in a freak accident, her body crushed beyond repair at the same time that Nikki Howard dies from an aneurysm. The doctors having a ruined body with a perfectly good brain and another perfect body with a useless brain are able to combine the two and create a healthy person, who is Em in Nikki's body. Obviously, Em has trouble dealing with a past that she can't remember and another that she can remember, but which is not legally her past.

The Meg Cabot series I've liked best so far is the Mediator series, and I have to say that if you like ghost stories and liked the Twilight series, this is even better!

I'm really tickled about my first real ebook, though.

*******************

There's a new Eureka and Haven on SyFy tonight!

If you're a Harry Potter fan, ABC Family will be having another of their Harry Potter weekends, starting with The Prisoner of Azkaban tonight, Half Blood Prince Saturday night, and finishing with The Order of the Phoenix on Sunday evening! To the best of my knowledge, it'll be the first time Order of the Phoenix will be shown on non-premium cable.

Other than that, the big news on TV is that it's nearly football season, and it's squeezing almost everything else off TV! My only consolation is that it will eventually go away.

Have a wonderful weekend!