This has come about, the way I understand it, from the recent increase in unsafe toys and products imported from Asia, and more specifically China. It is going to just ruin more small American businesses, cottage industry and crafters who make safe products from 'natural' local resources and who cannot bear the burden of product testing for items who weren't even under suspicion and were already manufactured in compliance with already existing safety laws. The obvious place to put more restrictions is at the source of the danger, and the country who supplies the imports. All imports should be subjected to a pre-defined safety standard and bear the cost of complying with meeting them. We already have become aware of China's relunctance to work with our import inspections or allow us in country to do it at the site of manufacture........so we can't easily control that, so we 'feel better' by putting into effect a law to control 'somebody' even if they're not part of the problem. Excuse my reaction. I am a small business owner who has lived with the ever-increasing ocean of laws and quarantines when the problems in my industry have been overwhelmingly brought upon us by imports. So I watch as our ports are increasingly accepting more, and I am the one who lives with trying to contain spread of their diseases by quarantines on my stock!

Scrap quilts are my Karma, I think. Before I started quilting, my mother used to urge me continually to take some of the fabric she had stashed over the years to use. I did and it was wonderful stuff, like raw silks she bought by the yards when we lived in Japan. She was always going to make a quilt, inspired by the wonderful cottage industry quilts we saw hanging on clotheslines when we lived in the Ozark Mountains. If you saw a line full of quilts, it was an unwritten invitation to stop and haggle. They were not somebody's laundry. Wells, she inherited and bought stashes after that at auctions and they all got sorted and folded into boxes and she bought a huge load of natural muslin to make a catherdral windows quilt and started one and got to the point she was so elderly she gave up sewing and it never got finished. When I started quilting, I heard daily that I should take fabric home to quilting with. When Mama died........I did. I think I am on the seventeenth quilt in less than five years. Not a one of them has been done entirely with purchased material, though many were made with unused cottons she had collected. But, it goes without saying I have enough scraps that the number of potential quilts I could make is driving me crackers. LOL. And when people hear I quilt, more elderly lady's stashes find their way to my house when children clean out their parent's houses. So, even though I was always a monochrome-themed person, I have learnt to appreciate scrap quilts. My wildest to date was the spider web and it even set my teeth on edge. LOL. But like said previously, by setting scraps against a themed background or using a common plain sashing, you can tame the scrap quilt enough it doesn't come across as something from a nightmare. I am just finishing up on a Blueridge Mountain beauty block quilt, using crisp blue paisley, solid blue and white and incorporating four patch random scraps into the diamonds. It reads serene. I'm loving the way it turned out. Long live scraps.

I stand by my earlier complaint while also acknowledging what sleeperblues said. It is indeed a sad fact that for many people, when money gets tight, medical bills get pushed to the back of the line and frequently don't get paid at all. Unfortunately, those doctors still have a practice to run and employees they must pay, regardless of whether someone has paid their bill or not. I suppose I pine for "the old days" myself. For the majority of my adult life, we lived paycheck to paycheck. We could budget to pay you in installments but we just didn't have a lump sum to give you upfront to pay in advance. Hubby and I have managed, over the past 10 years, to work our way out of that lower class (paycheck to paycheck) predicament into a solidly middle class status. Before that, it was (largely) an honor system. We promised we would pay what we could, when we could, until the balance was paid; the doctors took us at our word AND we fulfilled our obligation. Unfortunately, too many have gamed the system for too long and now, an increasing number of doctors and facilities require full upfront payment. Luckily for me, I've established a rapport with my regular physicians and dentists and they KNOW I'm "good for it" and they allow me to get needed services and pay out over time if I need to. I worry for my children though. It has taken years of seeing the same practitioners before we reached a comfortable spot that I could get what I need and they know I won't shaft them. What will my kids do in 15 years if they are just starting out and can't afford 1000 upfront for, say a root canal and crown?

Rhipsalis are very cool plants (but then all tropical cactus are, aren't they?). I don't know how many there are, and I've only grown the chicken foot cactus (I agree, an excellent common name that should be adopted by ICZN immediately) species, but I hope you get to collect them all, Shenue, and recreate the dryish-sometimes jungle for them. BTW, most cactus which have been in cultivation for a while often have several names - Rhipsalis is one of them, and as you've seen, there are several others.