Very pretty Karen. It's 69 here right now, but the wind is blowing about 30 mph so working outside is just too difficult. I hope this is the beginning of Spring! Blessings to all, Mona

cave creek canyon.. That mamas cross, is fairly old, several years.. one of my oldest crosses still surviving, it was from the first year I ever bought anything from the lily auction.. I dont think I spent more then 3 bucks on a cross back then. it was orginally just a fun thing to do one winter, those years crosses are all mostly moved, or trashed, sometimes you really get what you pay for. Silverkelt

I began using it last year. LOVE IT! Discovered when I started THIS year's plan that it "remembered" what I planted last year. When I clicked on a veggie to "plant" it, I got flashing red squares where I should avoid planting it this year. Helps you remember to rotate crops! It backshades every veggie according to plant family, which also helps you mix up plant families to confuse pests. Also, I really love the tab "plant list" because after I finish planning a bed, I get an exact count of how many of everything I planted. When I purchased my seeds this year at Victory Seeds, I noticed it gives an approximate number of seeds per packet. Coupled with the "plant list" function, I can avoid running short of a particular seed and having to buy another packet for just a few seeds. Mostly I love this program because I play with it all winter long, when nothing can be done in my REAL garden, and spend many happy hours planning and dreaming about what I will plant. I call it "virtual gardening!" There are a couple of aggravating features, and if you want to know what they are just ask . . . All in all, I think it's worth $25 a year. You could also use the "free trial" and print off your plan before the end of the 30 days, but you'd be giving up the year-to-year crop rotation benefit, and all the fun of tweaking your garden plan all winter long.

Thanks, ladies. I'm just fascinated w/ these all batik collections & finally, Hoffman does it spectacularly. I used to batik in my teens & 20s, you may remember earlier posts of mine about this. I've stayed on the sidelines watching through the years as batik came into quilting. Sometimes it came through muddy & sort of overall mediocre. But now, these prints Hoffman's had made, I'm just over the moon at how beautifully colored & designed most of these fabrics are. The blocks I've shown here only have 10 prints, there's another 30 more in variety, just amazing. I was going to make the design 'Tea Time' as advertised in this very colorway by Hoffman. But I don't have a particular ruler they recommend & while they offered an alternative suggestion for cutting, well I may have misunderstood & miscut a block. So, I've decided I'm sort of going to wing it. The block photographed above has been cut into 16 blocks (I've quartered each one, rearranged 'em & reassembled them). Then, I have 3 other comparable sets of blocks like this to work w/. Wooo, hoo, gonna be gorgeous & so fun to play with. I love design walls, here, I just started working on top of another quilt, already hanging on the wall. Magothy, thanks for the link, while not working, I HAVE seen the article, if it's the one abt compensating for the slightly inaccurate cutting of the Bali Pops. (One focuses on getting the full 2 1/4" of the strip & then any wiggle room gets worked out in the remaining seam allowance (if under or over the 1/4"; as I understood it)). These Pops will make for an interesting Log Cabin, & the Jelly Roll Races too, what fun!!