Awesome stuff - I have copied some of your patterns to try. I am an artist - oils, portraits, but I don't have nearly the creativity in this kind of thing that you do. From a pro - don't rag on your painting! I love that antiqued look that your stuff has. I hate putting that plastic stuff out even to recycle. I believe your inspiration can help keep a lot of stuff out of landfills. Martha Stewart needs to get a load of your stuff!

Oh my. What is a passionate rose lover like you doing in that glacial hell hole? Reading about your endeavors has exhausted me and I haven't even lifted a shovel. I admire your grit and determination, but would love to see you rewarded with thousands of blooms on your rose bushes for all your hard work. I bet they could use engineers in zones 7 to 10!

I too spent a lot of time thinking about our new kitchen as I love to cook and so do my adult children and friends. I chose an Aga, four door, red and I am so glad I did. I took a lot of grief for this choice (looks like someone's jaguar parked in the kitchen, etc) but now everyone loves it. We do turn it off in the peak of summer and use a conventional (well, induction, cooktop) and barbecue for summer cooking. We also do not air condition the greatroom/kitchen in which it is installed. Only the bedrooms are airconditioned, at the back of the house. We debated greatly the heat source. We live in the Pacific Northwest (cold rainy climate like the UK most of the year, hot summers tho) where electricity is still relatively cheap. This far out in the country natural gas is not an option, but propane was. However, our main consideration was the fact that we would have some hope of creating our own electrical energy via wind (we put a turbine in) and (eventually) solar, but no hope whatever of producing our own propane. It is a large footprint which we try and ameliorate via the wind turbine, hanging our laundry out to dry, driving a hybrid car and staying home rather than flying all over the place (say, on vacation). It's not a perfect solution to our shared environmental problems, clearly. BUt having installed it, what do we think? we use it to dry and press laundry (example table napkins can be hung until barely damp outside, then folded and placed on the Aga's warming plate to dry to a perfect ironed-look, same with sheets and pillow cases. We use it and it alone to make toast; we use it as a slow cooker (the 250 degree oven), we can on it, we cook on it, we make pizza in it; we dry mushrooms and herbs in it and on it, it gives the kitchen a gentle warmth in winter, which humans and dogs love. I have cooked on wood fired and coal fired stoves and ovens; on gas stoves and cooktops, on induction cooktops, in steam ovens, etc. I would go with the beloved Aga everytime and so would my DH, the skeptic, everytime.

Oh for god's sake let's not start dragging the aclu into this. I can't find it now, but just a couple hours ago I read where prime forclosures are starting to creep upward. One of the people profiled in the story was in Vegas--true, a declining mkt, but she had a good job as technology head of a casino and a fairly reasonably priced house. Nevertheless, in '06 or '07 she was bait-and-switched into an interest-only loan w/ a $40,000 prepay penalty that doesn't go away until 2009. (Countrywide) That $40k is more than 10% the amount of the mortgage. I thought to myself 'how the heck did she get into such a loan??' Then I noticed the picture. She's black. And yes, that does make a difference. Conservative pundits may protest till they're blue in the face that it's not color, it's poverty, or lack of education, or whathaveyou. But that's bull. It's color. Minorities are many times more likely than whites to get overcharged or offered only inappropriate products. It happens over and over again. Just a year or two ago, most of the big life insurers settled a class action case where they essentially were forced to admit that they'd charged blacks more for life insurance products over decades. They'd also churned these accounts and done all sorts of other fraudulent things. I used to date a guy who worked in a mortgage office located in a black neighborhood in Bklyn. This place was scam-central. I read years later that the company had been shut down by the atty general. It's a disgrace that it took so long. Even as a college kid I could tell they were in the business of ripping people off. So, bottom line, the fact that the aclu and others have fought to force lenders and other financial companies to a) do business with minorities at all, and b) do so fairly without adding a 'color surcharge,' has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that we're now in a mortgage meltdown caused by lax lending and fraud. What does have to do with it? Well, whoever invented the idea that people should convert unsecured loans to secured loans by taking out home-equity loans to pay off the CCs, for one. They're still running those ads in my area. What gets me is not only that shady 'credit counseling' companies would push it (why not, there's a buck to be made) but that it actually makes it into 'financial advice' given by so-called experts on tv and in magazines. Also, the Fed, by keeping the money supply so cheap and plentiful for so many years. Check out Jim Jubak on msnmoney.com for multiple well-thought-out discussions of why and how the Fed caused the last several asset bubbles, and why the current rate-lowering is setting us up for the next one. And of course the loan machines--I mean banks--that keep inventing ways of lending money to people under terms that are meant to look like they're good for consumers, but are actually just a way of dragging out the repayment and therefore increasing their profit (I/O, 40-year, exploding ARMs, etc). Finally: I was watching 'My First Place' on HGTV last night. A young couple was looking for a house somewhere in the mountains out west. They were completely unreaslistic about what they were going to get for ~$200k, I thought, but then lo and behold they found a place. Paid $225k. At the end, when they're showing the closing, I almost jumped out of bed--they took out a 100% interest-only ARM mortgage! They were shown signing the 'adjustable rate disclosure' without even reading it! I almost shouted--they still do those?!? I don't know when this was filmed, but it's a pretty new show. I wonder if they're foreclosed yet.