Some stuff (creative title, I know)

I have a few various things to share.

1)  You may have noticed a fantastic picture of Tom Selleck over on the right side of my blog ---->
No, not me.  Scroll down.  Well, I'm pretty excited that Tom is announcing my participation in my very first quilting bee!  If I did it right, when you click on Tom, it takes you to our Flickr group.  We have the mustachioed Tom as our mascot because it is the Mo-Stash Bee, meaning we will use fabric from our own stash.  There are 6 people, including myself, in my group and we will each make 2 blocks for each person for 6 months.  I'm first up in January (eeep!), which means I need to choose a block for my hive mates to make and a color scheme.  I'm neck deep in craft show plans now, so I'll have to ponder that one later.

2)  We had our holiday meeting for the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild last night.  The new guild leadership had a meeting on Tuesday, too and I'm excited about all the plans and ideas that we have for the group.  Some things coming up are:  a challenge, using Madrona Fabric.  (free fabric!), a sewing day in January, making placemats for Meals on Wheels, a quilt show in Ames, and some other things in the works.
We had a gift exchange last night and I made a little tree pillow and added one of my chapstick cozies, too.  I didn't take a picture of the pillow!  I'm sure someone else did, so I'll add that once it's available.  Jill got my pillow and chapstick cozy and at first I received the really cool Christmas tote that she made. We allowed steals in the gift exchange and I knew as soon as I opened it that it was going to be stolen.  I had briefly pondered how I might use the tote (to carry gifts, to use as a gift bag-but I'd want it back!, somehow decorate with it?) and sure enough it was stolen.  Ah, well.  That's the game.  So then I picked up Leila's gift bag and it was this pillow:

The trees and borders are all selvedges!  I really like it.  Leila did a wonderful job.  As usual.


Okay, off to accomplish things!