Dear (specifically Illinois and maybe upper Indiana as well as lower Wisconsin) Friends:
We need to hang out. Good thing for us, this can happen on Thursday night if you come over to Wilmette.
“Wilmette?” you say, scratching your elbow. “I’m not far from Wilmette.”
Well, back by popular demand — hurray! — I’m giving a lecture for the devastatingly talented and almost painfully beguiling Illinois Quilters (IQI) in Wilmette, which, as you rightfully point out, is not far from you. The guild meeting begins 6:30 p.m.; my lecture starts at 7:00 p.m. It all goes down at Temple Beth Hillel, 3220 Big Tree Lane, Wilmette. It’s a lovely venue.
There will be quilts. There will be a lecture called “10 Things I Know About Quilting & Life (I Think.)” It’s one of my favorite lectures to give and I’ve refreshed and updated it specifically for this gig. I love those IQI ladies and I fully intend to give them — which is to say you — a terrific evening full of tips, stories, laffs, and maybe even some tears. Me, I like to run the gamut: If you haven’t gotten misty and then laughed through the mist at one of my lectures, I have failed. And I’m simply not in the mood to fail. So there you go. I shall give Thursday evening my dead-level best. Guaranteed.
“But surely this is astronomically expensive, this Mary Fons event,” you think to yourself, and you consider going into the kitchen for more ice cream to assuage the pain of feeling left out and low on cash.
Well, get a load of this, Eeyore: Admission for non-members is just 10 bucks! This is because the IQI ladies are awesome, obviously. You can’t afford not to hop in the car and listen to a good book on tape and then hop out at the venue and be entertained by a fake blonde with a sewing machine.
I’m bringing books to sell and would love to autograph one for you. We can take pictures, shoot the breeze, talk quilt turkey — which would be Turkey red, amirite?? Hey-o! (Just a lil’ quilting joke for my hardcore quilters out there, no big deal.)
Anyway, come over. Quilt-geek out with me.
Julie
Sure wish Wilmette was closer as I would love to go! Maybe you’ll visit and lecture in the sunshine state one day!
Nicole Hannah
I’m not even close to being close to Wilmette but I’m sure you’ll be wonderful.
Just checked the map. If we left RIGHT NOW and didn’t stop we’d make it in time. Start without me, I might be late.