Hey, Bikermouse! When I grew up in San Diego I took adobe from the back bank, pulverized and ground it to make my own clay (hard work!!!), then sun-baked and tinted the resulting statuary with ground watercolors. (Most of you have probably made "lamp black" by holding a china plate at an angle over a candle flame to collect the soot and added a binder; other colors are harder, but all around us.) Does that make me more of a real artist than I am now? No. It simply means that I appreciate quality supplies. If civilization collapses and the network goes down we just might be back to cave paintings. Someone else gets to grind the mud, though. ;^) Carolly