Thanks for the Google info, and sorry to have repeated something that's been discussed already! I'm a newbie around here, a newbie to roses in general (except Knockouts), and I appreciate that everyone has been helpful every time I've asked for information about things! Especially since I can't find the info by doing a search - grrrrr. Deanna

I was wondering the same thing because I am seriously considering Virginia Mist right now and I keep going back to search for your pictures and try to get answers from folks with VA mist. Luckily, I had e-mailed myself the link to that page a few months ago so I can access it that way because the search function doesn't seem to pick it up. Very strange. Anyway, my one concern with my VA mist sample is that it seems to have a zillion tiny scratches in it when I test it with a fork or knife or ball of aluminum foil. I'm assuming this is because it is honed. It's making me worry about this option at all and steering me toward brushed Cambrian black or soapstone (where the scratches can at least be buffed out). Does your countertop show any tiny scratches in the surface? Granted, my sample is not yet sealed. Also, how was the price? Honestly, the quote I got for the VA Mist is almost the same as the price quote I got on soapstone! So I'm wondering if I'm getting taken for a ride here! If it was more in line with Cambrian Black, it might make our decision easier.

I was looking for reviews of washers and dryers when I needed to buy a new one. Google found the Laundry Forum. I don't think I even joined at that time - I just read what I needed and left for probably a few years. Then when I decided to remodel my kitchen I kind of remembered GW That Home Site had kitchen stuff too so I came back. Then I joined and became totally immersed in the Kitchen site for about two years. Once I was done with that project I drifted around to Cooking and some other places. Someone else from Kitchens who was done with their kitchen suggested KT. I checked in here for a while but didn't find I had much in common with most folks since a lot of people seemed to be retired. I probably still don't have all that much in common with a lot of people here but I now check in daily to see if there's anything going on that's at all relevant to me.

There was a thread that Pal posted recently of the intellectual sort, where he posted something to provoke discussion. Someone responded with a post about "self-appointed arbiters of taste" or some similar catty phase that was clearly directed at Pal. It was snotty, mean, and undeserved. The person clearly didn't understand or share Pal's intellectual interest in decorating and certainly didn't understand that it was intellectual interest that prompted the post. It was a particularly nasty example of a problem that Palimpsest has complained about before, and what I understand to have driven him off the kitchen forum a long time ago: People take things personally and defensively that were offered up in the abstract, or as theory, or as personal opinion. They can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that a difference of opinion is not a personal attack on them.