Thanks, Ann and Annie for the nice words 'bout the gk! I also liked the last picture of Aleksi and hope to get a copy. Ann, thanks for the link to Picasa2, also, as I have to get my photos organized, as soon as I get all of my recipes! Both have been on to-do lists waaay too long.

I absolutely love ginger, but I wasn't able to post to this before. I also love ginger flowers and have several types of ginger in my yard now. The blue ginger is blooming right now (see link below), but I also have red and white gingers, none of which are edible, but some of the flowers have very nice fragrances that are quite unique. As for edible ginger, I keep a jar of ginger paste (from an Indian market) that I use in soups, marinades, and stir fries, but not desserts. For desserts, I use ginger that I keep in the freezer. I should probably grow edible ginger. I bought ginger snaps at TJ's last week-end (along with some other more decadent cookies), but I think I should have made them myself. They were good but not quite gingery enough. I don't have any dried ginger. Lars Here is a link that might be useful:

A very practical exercise. sometimes Maths seems so useless, but when a teacher can show her students a practical use for the information they're learning, it makes it more interesting. Plus she's showing how you can use an abstract idea in a concrete way. Smart young lady! Kristene

I used to agonize over the "quilting" part of making a quilt, which would cause me to procrastinate, thus ending up with a pile of un-quilted quilt tops. But this past spring I went to a retreat and met a gal who had 3 colorful, cool looking and machine quilted quilts that she brought to sew the bindings on. She also machine quilted one while she was there. When looking closely, I noticed that they were not quilted as neatly as I would've done, but the were still great quilts. Not only that, but they would be finished quilts by the time she left! That was more than I could say for my pile of perfectly pieced tops. I'd say that she finished as many quilts that weekend that I have in the past 2 years! So since then, I've machine quilted and put bindings on 2 of my quilt tops and plant to keep at it and not get hung up on worrying about it whether or not my quilting will be perfect--I just try my best. I guess my answer is--yes, some people will notice, but I'd rather have a little less than perfect quilt to show, than have to say "Well, I'm working on a beautiful quilt--but, it's just not finished yet" That, and I'm finding that each quilt I machine quilt looks a little better than the last.