I took a clean pot and poured javex in it with some water and after about 2 hours there was a broken line of black around the top of the liquid that was a little puffy. I wiped it off with a scratchy pad and added more javex/water up over that line. After an hour or so the black ring was there again so I threw my pot away. Didn't know what else to do. I thought it was mold

They are lovely, Cherbo! I love the color. A friend of mine used Paton's Classic Wool in beige to try KoolAid dyeing and it turned out very nicely. We did a mini workshop on it in my kitchen. It was pretty amusing seeing that what we were cooking was... wool :) Socks are my favorite thing to knit, too. These are fun to make and felt: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter02/PATTfuzzyfeet.html I posted them on another message here. I have made several pair of them for relatives (and myself) and now get requests. They are very yummy and cozy. Diane

Many thanks mrb and sshrivastava for your staying power on this thread! I apologize for the delay in my update: I have, like many others, been suffering from the flu. Well, at this point, let me take back my praise of Miele tech support...I am now actually pretty ticked off with them about the situation. Though I might as well chill out...it is only a washing machine. So my local tech (who is a tech like mentioned on another thread here, contracted by Miele, not actually Miele corporate) came out on Wednesday and shot in the new board. I told him that Miele was sending out a senior tech the next day to take data from the machine and asked that he leave the old board with me since they wanted it back at HQ. He is a very nice fellow and was fine with that. Needless to say, no big surprise, as predicted here, the new board is actually exactly the same as the old board on the delicates cycle...... After my local tech left I called and left a message with Miele to apprise them of the situation and giving them a heads up because my tech implied that perhaps their factory tech could reprogram the machine in the field. I was hoping the senior tech, if he knew ahead, would then be able to change the behavior of the delicates program. Very late in the day I got a voicemail message from the person at Miele who had been handling this, with all kinds of cover your behind language, saying that the service call from the central tech was now cancelled. They had now gone ahead with testing of the machine at Miele and their machine is doing the same thing.....filling on cold and no heater for delicates... DUH!!!!! I was furious. I had expressly told them, after numerous phone calls, waiting on hold, being told it was user error etc., that I did not want to rip my machine open unless it was clear that the program was not acting correctly. They swore up and down it should be heating on that cycle. I guess it is as everyone is saying...Miele tech support is now reading from the manual/script, and treats customers as idiots. The only reason I was talked into going ahead with the board replacement was that they promised this senior tech was coming by and i felt like I had their attention and that would lead to an opening of discussions to get this resolved. So yesterday I called Miele and got the person I had been dealing with. I let him know that I was extremely unhappy, especially with the fact that they pulled the service call from me at the last moment and that I had been telling them for over a month exactly what the machine was doing. Why noone could be bothered to verify it before now is completely ridiculous. I am now told that the issue has been turned over to the engineering dept. I have demanded that a supervisor or someone senior call me because I still do want to follow this up. However, since they are now muttering rubbish about this being "by design"...which is essentially a copout since it is very clear from the manual that the cycle should be capabable of a warm wash at least...I doubt it will go any further. And of course they are only saying this now after a month of swearing up and down that the machine should be giving a warm wash and using the heater.. @sshrivastava: I take your point about Miele COLD. I should clarify, on handwash, wool and delicates, the machine takes in ONLY from the COLD valve. Therefore, the COLD fill for those cycles is not 86 deg but whatever temp your incoming cold water supply is. Right now it is around 10C in Buffalo so my washing is ridiculously cold. On this point, pretty much if Miele wants to fix this cycle they would have to allow the machine to fill on a MIX of hot and cold, if ever to achieve 40C. The delicates cycle uses a LOT of water, which is its great appeal, and there is no other cycle like it on the machine. The 110V heater would definitely not be able to get that much water up to 40C in the wash time allotted for the cycle. My suspicion is that the delicates cycle on Miele has always been designed to fill only from the cold water valve, but with the old 220V heaters it was not a problem. I suspect that something was changed in the programming when Miele went to the 110V machines in the US. In any case, I told them right out it was not by DESIGN, but clearly a MISTAKE. So now I think I need to chill out about this. I have absolutely no intention of releasing my spare control board so at least I have that in reserve if I ever need it. I the mean while I think I have found that the dress shirts program could be used in lieu of delicates. The wash action is not quite so gently and the water level not as good. However it does use the heater. Therefore, as the machine fllls I can dump in a few extra pitchers of warm water manually down the hatch and let the heater take it from there....it is better than nothing. Doing this with the actual delicates cycle itself is useless I have found because the heater doest not engage at all. Therefore even dumping hot water straight from my faucet (over 55C water) down the hatch results in a pretty cold wash after you take into account heat loss due to the mass of the drum and the wash time. So I think the bottom line is that there are at least two useless cycles on this machine: Normal (no heater) and Delicates (cold only). I also think wool is pretty much useless in that WARM is not achieved by the heater in the cycle time and that cycle does not allow the extended option. @MRB: Thanks for your info about the gentle cycle. Here is what my service manual says: 2.2.2 Gentle Cycle Setting for gentle cycle. Selecting the gentle cycle reduces the drum movement. Fabrics are washed gently. For lightly soiled laundry. It does not say anything about which cycle it affects. So far as I can tell it is not affecting my delicates cycle. However, I am leaving it engaged because all the cycles look aggressive enough to me, even with it enabled. I would not be surprised if it is not actually doing anything....

Right but that type of campfire is prohibited in every rv camp ground we have stayed at. Unless it's in a very contained metal enclosure they would consider it an open fire. Now down on the beach itself in some areas you can do that since there's not much to catch fire. I was just checking out several other rv campgrounds we have been considering in other areas and each of those also prohibited fires of any kind other than in a contained metal bbq grill. Their liability increases dramatically if they allowed anything else. Now in boondocking situations if the landowner permits it you might be able to get away with that kind of cooking. The drought conditions in many states would likely determine the safety. Containment is the key, if completely contained it can be much easier to extinguish and control. It doesn't take much to burn an rv to the ground fast that's probably why they have gotten so strict with the rules. They do have those kinds of cook outs on the cattle trails and ranches and the competitions that are at big campgrounds for those events. We have been to a few of those years ago and it was wonderful. Great food especially the cobblers made in the cast iron Dutch ovens with the coals on top.