I want to thank you all for participating in my Round Robin. I hope you all had fun. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I know I have enjoyed reading what everyone was receiving. Treasa, Fedex ground probably would have been cheaper than US mail. Diene, Yes fedex "ground" takes about the same amount of time as Parcel post...but most times costs less if shipped from a fedex station (not a mail boxes etc type location) and the tracking on fedex is much better and the insurance does not cost anything. Where USPS mail charges for both tracking and insurance. FederalExpress (not ground) is really fast but costs much more. I love the new USPS flat rate boxes. A specially marked flat rate box is only 7.50 priority. Cant beat those prices.

Thank you everyone for your help. Who would have thought the cats would be the defining factor. And thank you Pattynyc, for jumping in on this one! I hope you will feel at ease to contribute to all kinds of threads. I will look into microfiber sofas if we go new. The two fabric chairs we bought to go with his dining table are microfabric and so pretty. He was admonished, "don't you dare let your cats touch these!" I certainly do appreciate the advice about the scratching post. He definitely has to get a new one and we will check that one out. Growing up, we had a cat and a dog. The cat was an indoor/outdoor cat so maybe that is why she never ever scratched anything. And our mother was a meticulous decorator and house cleaner. We grew up in a house that looked like the Winterthur catalog, so I don't know how db ended up like this.

Not to hijack your thread OSH - but still pillow cover related...I just made my first CL purchase...New w/tags Pottery Barn pillow covers for $10 each! I had been looking at them on Ebay for $20. They will go on my denim couch & loveseat for a "punch of color." As far as YOUR pillow situation goes, how do you feel about these? I have the lumbar version in green and really like it. Here is a link that might be useful: POTTERY BARN WOOL JACQUARD PILLOW COVERS(2)

Grandad..... no..... though I answer to Grandma to a couple of sprogs. Frieda, you are very partly right in that'Dido' is from classical legend of course - Queen of Carthage - and I love references like that; also poetry, yes, and I particularly love Purcell's opera 'Dido and Aeneas' with her dying lament, 'When I am laid in earth' before she climbs her funeral pyre as her lover sails away to found 'another Troy on Italian soil'. The opera also has a very beautiful viola solo - I used to be a viola player and have played it in several productions, up and down and here and there. But also, in another life I was a Diana.... let's not go into that, shall we..... but when I had to change, I realised I can't seem to let go of my name totally - it's me. So 'Dido' was one of the closest I could manage: even so, simply Dido was already taken so I had to put a 1 after it. Reallly, I should have registered as Dido Jones which I now consider to be my alter ego, though at first it seemed strange. For a while I felt like a different person, having a different name. Now I've just reverted to my old, grumpy, usual self. And, to cut a long story short, I suppose I look fairly Welsh (what I am - hence the adopted surname 'Jones'), being smallish (5'2", 56lbs), with dark-brown eyes, ex-dark hair (now white) and of an 'excitable' nature (have been known to throw things like ashtrays, in the olden days when there were such things lying around in any old places) Dido