Greetings to the Community Circle participants and those of you who are still thinking about attending!

Rita and I, the Midwest YaYa Sisters, are eager to come to Florida for this event. Both of us are looking out our windows at lots of snow. Here in northern Minnesota we've set some records for frigid weather and winter is becoming a long season. We both know we'll have a warm reception and lots of fun as the Community Circle gathers in March.

I look forward to sharing lots of project ideas that are great to embellish with machine embroidery. My favorite is what I call "automatic applique" which is letting the embroidery machine add perfect stitches around the edges of attached fabric. No more perfecting your skill of hand guiding the machine needle around fabric shapes...just let the machine do all the hard work, and make it look professional too. I've been using cotton threads for many designs lately. I like the non-shiny appearance for some of my stitched designs.

The month of January did speed by and I'm excited to say that I was able to attend the inauguration! Thanks to the hospitality of a friend's sister, I had a place to stay and experienced the excitement of the pre-inaugural concert and the District of Columbia and all those two million people. My town of Aurora, Minnesota boasts a population of 1850, so this is a very big change to be in such large crowds.

You'll hear from Rita soon. She's hard at work on another deadline. It seems to be how we work now, balancing and prioritizing deadlines. Maybe that's your life too. It's great to think we'll have a break from that in March!

I'll write again soon and give a preview of what will be new when I come to Florida and what I'm working on with my deadlines.

Cheers!
Mary Mulari