Hello and happy new year! I hope you’ve had a great one so far, all two days of it anyway. I can’t believe it’s January suddenly. My 2012 flew past at lightning speed – it was probably my least flickred, least craft-blogged year since I started posting in 2005. Leading Portland Modern Quilt Guild this year was such a wonderful experience, but between the guild, keeping up with two lively little ones, and plenty of writing/work deadlines rolling along, my own little photo/blog world shrank quite a bit. I’m excited to start the new year with some color and sharing a few of my favorite things I made!

I learned how to make bagels, stitched up some skirts for me and Pearl, did a lot of writing, did plenty of charity quilting, took another class with Denyse Schmidt, watched my cuddly baby turn into a big kid in a 3T (!) birthday shirt, and lost track of how many little tote bags and headbands I sewed. With a long East Coast trip on the horizon, my holiday crafting dreams dwindled to baking a bunch of un-photographed cookies, and hosting a party for Pearl and her friends to make their own awesome ornaments. (The Tammis Keefe/Winterkist Christmas tree skirt/poncho I was dreaming of will be a 2013 production… sigh.) On the non-crafty (semi-crafty?) side of things, I started a petition to ban BPA that more than 200,000 people signed (wish me luck with the FDA! It’s been a process), helped organize four quilt shows, got to shake hands with President Obama when he visited Portland, and went to Seattle, Astoria, all over Eastern Oregon, Ashland, Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, and North Carolina.

I hope to be over here a lot more often this year. I miss keeping track of things I’m excited to be doing, recipes I loved the most, and most of all reading friends’ blogs. My old standard, Bloglines, crashed/changed around a lot and it looks like I am going to be rebuilding my blog reading list from scratch. The PMQG blogroll is a good start!

Wishing you a happy and lovely new year.

PS – If you’re on instagram I’m westcoastcrafty over there. Please say hi!