I think there are issues you need to adjust and the magic may just happen. 1/ Are your cuttings wanting to grow? This is very important. 2/ Is the light strong enough? 3/ Is the temperature reasonable? First you need to know if your cuttings want to grow. Plants grow in cycles. They often need a rest then grow again. If you get very healthy growing stems, they might have been getting into a slow down cycle and go to sleep. That's why people often pick stems that have been resting for a while and now start to enter a growing cycle, not the other way around. Put them into the refrigerator for a week may also help for some plants to fake hibernation and getting out of it in your cloning machine's warm temperature. The light may not be strong enough. You can use energy saving bulbs, coolwhite type and about 20W. I would use 2 of them to supply blinding bright white light to teh cuttings. Beware of the heat though. Let some air flow through to make sure it's cool. A little fan blowing precisely at the bulbs might help to gently remove hot air out. Temperature should warm at the bottom and cool at the top. The idea is that you should keep teh root zone warmer than the leaves. It's good when you do it in colder temperature and use an aquarium heater to warm the water at the bottom to a constantly warm temperature. Good luck!

elery bought the KA attachment and I haven't been able to use it successfully yet, partly because by the time I set the KA on the counter and have to reach up to push the dough down the tube, I have to stand on a chair, I'm too short. I've also not gotten the pasta to stay shaped, they tend to clump together and I've decided I need three hands, one to push in the pasta, one to catch the strands as they come out the other side, another to cut off the pasta and lay it to dry without gumming it all up around itself. Nope, don't like the KA pasta attachment much..... Annie

A huge part of the equation (as you have seen here) is your individual needs. I'm using the JoAnn's sewing table (probably the one linked above,its the one with 2 drop leaves, on wheels (which lock) and the center under storage); I took painters tape and made my own ruler along one long end.It works really well when I can work standing up (5'8" with long arms) or when i'm having health issues with standing I can sit in a bar stool height chair and work the width of one of the leaves. I also have a tall stool, I altered it previously for kitchen counter work when I'm unable to stand for long, that is on wheels and works if I need more mobility at the table. The size makes it great for clothing (long patterns), crafts and I'm sure quilting (haven't gotten there yet). The sewing machine is a lot more individualized. I am nearly blind, recently moved to bifocals. I have severe fibromyalgia and significant joint issues in my neck. With guidance from my pain management OT and a lot of help from my father we created a not so pretty but very functional set up for me. I was told to get my chest as close as possible to table surface, and sewing level as close to eye level as I could. So I was able to use my bifocal without leaning down or over. And was not REACHING in addition to lifting my arms. I'm still fine tuning. Old machine died last week and the new one threw things a little off. I still need to get a better support chair with rollers. My job currently is to make sure as I lift my hands up to work with fabric NOT to raise my shoulders or extend my elbows beyond the hip width if possible. But I CAN sew and work patterns for hours daily, many days running without ending up on pain meds or in bed exhausted. I'll try to add some photos...been a year since I used this site, my memory is a little foggy. Please excuse the mess in the pictures. I'm in the midst of 6 or 7 projects, and my fabirc organization is totally non-existant. It's driving me a bit mad, but I have plans for reinforcements to come in and get it stashed away. Here is a link that might be useful: pictures of set up on photobucket

Recently, the sales lady at my sewing machine shop (where they know me well enough to call me by my first name) explained sergers in a way I hadn't thought of before: Sergers KNIT a seam and seam finish all at the same time. Depending on the model and how you set them up (there are a variety of stich patterns you can select on most home machines), the serger uses 1, 2, or 3 needle threads and 1 or 2 looper threads that do, indeed, knit a seam and seam finish, while also trimming off the excess seam allowance with cutting kinves. I own two of these machines. Yes, you can use them on sheer fabrics to keep them from fraying. I once made a lovely sueded rayon dress for a friend, with princess seams down the front and the back. I serged every seam allowance on all the flat pieced before I started seaming it together. This made adjusting the princess seams for fit much easier. I don't always use this method, but it worked well in this instance. Sometimes I just sew seams on a garment with the serger. Other times, I'll baste with a regular sewing machine to check for fit, then "re-sew" the seam with the serger to do the final seam and seam finish all at once. CMC