Chris, I’m not so sure you’ll get a reply from Jean, as this post is over 10 years old. I don’t think Jean has posted on this forum for quite a few years. I do believe Mary Washington is available from several mail order nurseries now. Angel Gardens, Roses Unlimited, Rogue Valley Roses, and A Reverence for Roses all list Mary Washington in their inventory lists. It is a beauty, isn’t it? Lisa

I made this poncho longer by adding rounds to it. The Lionsbrand pattern states that you should have 60 blocks at the end of 20 rounds. I can't remember exactly how many rounds I made, but I made sure that I ended with blocks in multiples of 3 (63, 66, 69, 72). When I crocheted the first round of the edging, I figured out the number of blocks was not going to work out and so I took out at least 3 rounds of blocks - I think I ended up with 72 blocks. Then I re-crocheted the first round of the edging and it worked out. The scalloped edging wound up working out beautifully (there were 24 scallops and the last round of the edging consisted of 72 shells). In retrospect, to lengthen the poncho, you'll need to add 6 rounds at a time for it to work out. I think the original pattern of 20 rounds with 60 blocks probably makes 20 scallops, so when you add 6 rounds, you get 2 additional scallops and that keeps the poncho balanced. So when I added 12 rounds I got 4 additional scallops. Good luck! Avalon

Well, she did call the police for a ride, but was most likely in panic mode. Police did not give her a ride, though (maybe they would've, I dunno): Her driver was ready to take her to the hospital. But if I were a TV personality, I would also be in panic mode about a cut so noticeably front-and-center. She wasn't in New York City at the time. She was at her home in Northern Westchester County -- a little less than an hour north of NYC, and I am familiar with the roads in that area, having lived in the Bedford/Mount Kisco area. They are winding and narrow (until you get to the main street in Mount Kisco, near the hospital), and if that snowstorm was getting heavy, I might've also called the police to ensure I could get to the hospital. (Not as bad as calling an ambulance, IMHO, and that's not a crime-filled area that it would've been a horrible thing to pull an officer off his/her patrol to take her there.) It also happened at night -- not during the day as someone else posted -- which makes driving on some of those roads a bit more treacherous. I'm sure that her house is off a winding one-lane road, for privacy's sake, much like other celebrities' homes there. I remember a shortcut I used to take that ran past a house (mansion, more like it) owned by Mariah Carey at the time; it's not one I took unless the weather and road was clear. Facial cuts? Yeah, I would want a plastic surgeon, too. They're not there just to do nose jobs and eyelifts. (The 40-something photos taken by Martha's stables manager, tho? That one of the wallpaper border cracked me up! I'll bet that person will soon be on Martha's PR team--altho I wonder if Martha herself hollered at her to grab the camera on the way out and "Photograph everything you see! I'll use it for my blog!") Bottom line? If there was a time to act like a diva, in her public-life circumstances, that was it.

My experience in genealogy research has shown that mostly it was the immigrants themselves who were the ones to change their names. For example, many/most Italians changed one vowel of their surname - either dropped the ending vowel altogether, or changed an "i" to an "o" or an "e" to an "a," etc. To me, they did it as a way of representing their new start in a new country. No, "Michael" most likely wouldn't be the name given in Austria. It would more likely be Mikkel, Michel, or Michal. In Italy, it would be Michele (pronounced mick-ELL-ay). Yes, Ancestry's search engine leaves much to be desired. I wish we had the ability to click on a column heading to sort by the spelling of the surname, or the date, etc. But, you *can* filter the results to a small degree. For example, you can narrow the name results by changing to "Exact," "Sounds Like," "Similar," or "Soundex," or a combination of those. You can narrow the date range to the exact year, or plus-or-minus 1, 2, 5, or 10 years. And, as Raee mentioned, you may need to look through lots of results before you find what you're looking for. After all, someone has to be the last one listed, and that could be the one you want! Alisande, send me an e-mail with all of the information that you currently have, and I will see what else I can find for you.