thank you both! no cats, but i went to the store to order and discovered that the stock fabric is dry clean only! gasp! and they're not slipcover style chairs, so i had to go with something practical. that immediately put me into the custom fabric category but i got to choose exactly what i wanted. i went with a washable microfiber in a color called hemp. we've had good luck with light washable microfibers on our sofas in the past. i'm a color person, always drawn to color but really trying to exercise restraint in the main living area of this house, so i'm feeling so proud of myself for such mature color choices. :) the base of the chair is a very light neutral, and then the pillow is a large plaid with a warm gray base and beige/cream. it looks very ski lodgey and cozy. bad lighting, but you get the idea. the flash just made it worse on my phone.

I'll add a few more. Sears and Roebuck catalog Using a Sears and Roebuck catalog for toilet paper (in an outhouse). Corn cobs soaking in kerosene in a can on the back porch used as a fire starter for the kitchen stove. Kitchen matches (The last kitchen match made in the US was about 2 years ago.) Blow torch Bump starting a car engine. (It should have a manual transmission for this. This can be accomplished with a few automatics if the transmission has a rear oil pump. The vehicle has to be pushed fast enough for the oil pump to engage the transmission clutches tight enough to avoid slipping.) Setting the output of a generator on a car engine by moving a control brush. Fountain pen. Dictionary. Marchant calculators. These could extract square roots. This was accomplished by a series of subtractions while keeping count of the number of subtractions. It took several seconds to do this. It was using an oddity of the number system: Adding a series of odd numbers, starting with 1, returns the square of the number of odd numbers. Isn't that neat. 1 1 3 4 [1+3] 5 9 [4+5] 7 16 [7+9] 9 25 [9+16] ************ By the way, the proper lubricant for a slide rule is talcum powder or body powder. The object is to have the static friction as close as possible to dynamic friction to reduce a stick-slip action. When these two frictions are equal, the slide rule action becomes smooth. Slide rules made of bamboo usually do not require lubricants, and in my day, were more expensive. Engineering slide-rules have vertical cursor lines on both sides of the rule. These are adjustable and should be checked for alignment before using the slide-rule. These two cursors must be aligned with each other, in other words, when the cursor on one side lies on its index, the other side must also be on its index line. The index line is at ends of the scale. The reason for this is there are calculations that use both sides of the device and will be in error if the two lines on the cursor glasses are not aligned. A 10 inch slide-rule can only calculate to 3 places. Sometimes, it can do a 4th place if the answer lies between the 1 and 2 on the scale. A 20 inch slide-rule adds one more place. I have seen only one of these in my lifetime. It was a special issued by GM to some of its engineers in the 1950s. ************

Hosta?! You mean DEER LETTUCE! I love Hosta, there are so many beautiful, tropical-looking ones with enormous blue-green leaves. Alas, I can grow NONE of them here among herds of deer. I can't spend my life spraying as I have 0 time. Two years ago, I supposedly "retired", now I teach 13 classes a week and have over 200 students, which is pretty good for an old man, Also have over some 600 plants (tropicals, subtropicals, cold hardies). Peren, Cycads are relatively easy outside but make terrible indoor plants, I never bring mine into the house..., too big, to heavy, too SHARP, and too prone to mealy bugs under indoor conditions. I have at least 6 of these big Cycas revolutas (Japanese sago "palms", they ain't palms), have had them for decades. They pup, so reproduce asexually, also sexually, but have not had gendered cones yet. Cucuzza seeds are readily available online and they do grow FAST, not sure how long a growing season they require. My friend's fruits are from zone 6A/Pa and they are big enough.

Petal, IDK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIRq44GKyuU China, I luv your kitchen! That stove. And dont be surprised if I steal your majollica utensil holder. We have a cabinet with vertical slots (behind doors) above the fridge, and that's where all the cutting boards, baking sheets, and platters/trays go. Isnt that hard to reach? Ruby, I have an hotel silver pitcher I use the same way!