Limit selector not working as expected

[Neo]

I have the following simple site-structure:

HOME

    - Portfolio (portfolio-list.php)

          - Category A (portfolio-category.php)

                 - item a1 (portfolio-item.php)

                 - item a2

                 - item a3

          - Category B

                 - item b1

                 - item b2

                 - item b3

          - Category C

                 - item c1

                 - item c2

                 - item c3

I would like to show 6 random items from the Portfolio on HOME, for which I wrote the following code:

<!-- jCarousel -->
<section class="jcarousel recent-work-jc">
<ul>

<?php // 
$portfolio_children = $pages->get("/portfolio/")->children();

	// Get children of portfolio page
	foreach ($portfolio_children as $children) {
					
		// Get children's children
		foreach ($children->children("limit=6, sort=random") as $child) {

		      echo '<li class="four columns">';
		      echo '<a href="'.$child->url.'" class="portfolio-item">';
		      echo '<figure>';

		      $first_image = $child->project_gallery->first()->width(460);
		      echo '<img src="'.$first_image->url.'" alt="'.$first_image->description.'"/>';
		      echo '<figcaption class="item-description">';
		      echo '<h5>'.$child->title.'</h5>';
		      echo '<span>'.$child->parent->title.'</span>';
		      echo '</figcaption>';
		      echo '</figure>';
		      echo '</a>';
		      echo '</li>';
		}

 } ?>
				
</ul>
</section>
<!-- jCarousel / End -->

The problem is that it gets all portfolio items. The random sorting works, but not the 'limit=6'.

Any idea what is wrong? 

[diogo]

The problem is that you are choosing 6 from each category, and not 6 from all. The ideal would be to get all the portfolio pages with one selector. There are several ways of doing this, the one that looks more logical in your case is to select by template:

$portfolio_pages = $pages->find("template=portfolio-item, limit=6, sort=random");

foreach($portfolio_pages as $item) {
    // echo here
}

[Neo]

Thanks, diogo. That worked and looks much cleaner.