Urgent Help Needed : Caught spinning in loops

Greetings Guys,

Have been toying arround with different code snippets {Have been scouring through the WordPress Codex trying to see whether I can get a solution on my own}, the following seems to work, however, instead of showing only 3 articles {randomized of course}, it duplicates and shows 6 instead.

Could I be on the right track, or am I getting more and more lost?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Rgds
Q

<!-- begin content container -->
	<div class="content pngfix">

		<!-- clearing div -->
		<div class="clear"></div>

			  <h1><a href="/?page_id=xxx">Category Title Here</a>
			  <!-- subtitle-->
			  <span>Some Description Here for the Category</span>
			  </h1>

<?php query_posts('posts_per_page=3&cat=11'); ?>
<?php $posts = get_posts('numberposts=3&category=11&orderby=rand'); foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>

			<?php

            $col = 0;
            $cols_per_row = 3;
            while (have_posts()) : the_post();
              if($col == 0) echo '';
              ?>

                    <!-- Column -->
                    <div class="grid_8 column'<?php echo $col; ?>">
                        <!-- begin spacing div -->
                        <div class="pngfix">
                            <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

                            <p>
                                <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><img class="frame" src="<?php $thumb = get_post_custom_values('project-image'); echo $thumb[0]; ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>

                            <?php the_content_rss('', TRUE, '', 28); ?>

                                <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="more">
                                    <img src="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/wp-content/themes/ANAW-Theme/images/btn-read-more.png" alt="Read more on this entry..." />
                                </a>
                            </p>      

                        </div><!-- end begin spacing div -->
                    </div><!-- End Column -->

			  <?php
              if($col++ >= $cols_per_row){
                $col = 0;
                echo '';
              }
            endwhile;
            ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>

Greetings Guys,

Still not giving up on my attempts, just noted some more problems with the above code:

– Not only are the posts not limited to 3 [i.e. if one has say, 10 articles in the category, all 10 show up], but also, the <div class="grid_8 column"> containers are now not of equal length [i.e. if one ‘container’ has more content/ longer thumbnail image, the design ‘breaks’.

Really eager to learn something new….