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After eating some homemade chocolate at Olbrich Gardens wine and chocolate night, I had to post what I have about making chocolate.

This looks like a great machine - Cocoa Town.
This is a cheaper machine – Santha

Here are some good forums-

• Chocolate Alchemy
• The Chocolate Life

Great resources for robot plans.

Projects for NXT 2.0.

BuildItSolar: Solar energy projects for Do It Yourselfers to save money and reduce pollution.

From browsing around this site, it appears to be the best.  The resources are up to date and they had everything I knew about plus more.

There are so many choices in organic cotton and other fibers.  After 12 years my JC Penney towels are starting to fray and I am beginning to feel embarrassed to have guests use them.

The two main choices are waffle weave and thick terri cloth.  Thick towels are soft and sensuous, but scratchy when dried on the line.  Waffle weave save a lot of energy in the dryer, but do they seem too frugal?  Here is what I have found so far.  Note that gsm stands for grams per square meter.  The higher the number the thicker the cloth.

• $70 – Hand-loomed in Turkey with intricate designs or 1200 gsm from EcoChoices
• $30 – 700 gsm cotton towel from GoodFIbers
• $28.50 – from India 600 gsm – Green Nest
• $30 – 500 from Turkey with low impact dyes – Gaiam
• $30 – Set of cheap looking but organic towels – Sears

Looking at this list, I think it is fair to say that you get what you pay for.  I haven’t reviewed all of these towels in person, but the one from EcoChoices certainly looks nice.  Let me know if you try them.

I have been uploading some photos to stock photography sites.  So far my best sellers have been of confetti and an empty plate of chocolate chip cookies.

-you can sign up to sell your own photos too-

-my Shutterstock portfolio-

This is an old post from another place.  I decided to repost it to remind myself of summer.

As the end of summer is near, tomatoes are on my mind. The current art project in our house is the tomato. I thought that I would share my attempts so far to find paintings with tomatoes in them.

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I am trying to make a reference for where to find more information about tea bowls.  Here is what I have so far.

Best books in print

• Shoji Hamada: A Potter’s Way & Work - Amazon Link (continue reading…)