Lint and Scraps

Take-away

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Mon, 05 May 2008 02:56:00 +0000

For those of you who have seen me at the spring shows, you will know why this post has everything to do with pizza box storage. For those of you who haven't seen me at a show this spring, what are you thinking?! :-) You have one last shot - the North Shore show in just under two weeks.

I've had a number of you ask why I chose pizza boxes, so I thought of my top five reasons to have them, and my top five reasons not to use them.

Top five reasons:

Recyclable
Stackable/non-crushable
Lightweight, especially when compared to plastic bins
When not in use, they fold flat and take up very little space
Cheap! You can pick up around 50 of them for less than $25 at most restaurant supply stores. I prefer Boelter because it is near my house.

Top five reasons not to use cardboard boxes:

My cause you to be more hungry than usual while quilting
If you don't buy clean ones from the restaurant supply company, they will smell like pizza, as well as your fabric
They're not recommended for use in homes with teenage boys who will be disappointed they don't include pizza
They are not waterproof
Unlike their shipping-box cousins, they do not make comfortable furniture when used in bulk

There are of course many other reasons to use pizza boxes in which to store fabric. I just chose my top five. You should be able to fit approximately 3 yards of fabric in a personal-pan-sized box, or 6 yards of fabric in a standard large. Most restaurant supply companies will also offer other sizes, but I have found that for gift giving and stash exchanges, the small size works best, whereas for the large size works best for quilt-camp weekend projects and stash management. You can also store charm packs and jelly rolls in most pizza boxes if you buy the deep-dish variety. This will help keep your pinking-sheared-edges from linting all over everything. And of course as always, if you'd like to see the pizza boxes in action, come see me at my last spring show!

Details, details, details

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:46:00 +0000

It really all is in the detail! Despite traveling with a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old which leaves very little time for looking at details, I found some wonderful tidbits throughout England.

English Hand-painted buttons

12th century Skipton Castle stone carving

York Minster tile

Gladstone Pottery paint samples

I have to take the time to enjoy small details in my next quilt.

Speaking of details, we finally updated the webshop to reflect the sale price of our inventory. All fabric is now $6 or less. Look for an update in our other categories soon.

Food on fabric makes you fat

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Hochstedler) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:13:00 +0000

The fabric trend of licensing popular pop culture icons has gone to extremes to find something new to print on fabric. Comign out in the next year, we have to add PEZ Candy as "food" to look for on fabric.

Blue Iris Pantone

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:31:00 +0000

If you're fealing blue for the holidays, you're fitting right in for the color trend for 2008. I'll blog next in January.

15 days left to get great Holiday Kits for gifts

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:40:00 +0000

It's come to my attention, with only 15 days until Dovely Quilts takes
a brief holiday vacation, I'm going to end up buying my gifts online
yet again. I've included in this blog, some of the most popular kits
bought this year as gifts to give. As you can tell, there are many
styles as well as price ranges.

The nice part is, they do not cost any more than if you would buy the
yardage on their own, and since they come pre-matched and with a
pattern, it is an appropriate gift for beginning quilters, or quilters
with limited storage space. Consider giving a kit to someone who
enjoys going to quilt camps. It's any easy thing for them to pack in
their suitcase.

Tapestry by Fig Tree (a charm pack kit)

Lakehouse Daisies

P&B Linden

Oak & Reel from Moda

Harmony

Ascot by Bethany Reynolds

Barn by American Jane

Four on the Floor by American Jane

In addition to the ones pictured, we still have a few kits from
Poetry Collection, Faded Memories, Twenty Six Letters, and Noah's Ark.
Note, you must order by the 21st to ensure they will be shipped by
the new year.

Debbie Mumm goes to Jo-Ann

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:40:00 +0000

In honor of Debbie Mumm's expansion into the Jo-Ann fabric stores, and the noticeable lack of Jo-Ann stores near Dovely Quilts & Fabrics, we will put our Debbie Mumm fabric panel on the web shop on sale for 25% off.

A second note of interest for those holiday shoppers: if you are looking for a local product to hang quilts & wall hangings, check out L&B Designs LLC.

Wisconsin Quilt Museum Holiday Open House

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:17:00 +0000

The Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts is having an open house at the end of November. Don't miss it!

Special quilting events at the Milwaukee JCC

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:18:00 +0000

Check out what the Milwaukee JCC is doing this fall:

Quilts on exhibit: quilts made by students from the Milwaukee Jewish Day School for at-risk babies born in Milwaukee
Louise Silk will be visiting, and will have her work on display
several quilting classes.

Details available by clicking on the image:

The Quiltmaker's Gift

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:30:00 +0000

For those of you who are looking for another way to experience the wonder of quilts, don't miss this local opportunity to see a great play from the First Stage Children's Theater: The Quiltmaker's Gift, running now through November 11.

Jellyrolls and charms

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 01:59:00 +0000

If you are new to quilting and keep running across patterns calling for charm packs or jellyrolls, you may not quite understand for what the pattern calls. There are a number of companies currently producing these handy, pre-cut fabric offerings. Generally speaking, a charm pack is a 5" square collection of 30 or more fabrics and a jellyrolls are 2.5" x 44" sets of 45 or more matching fabrics. The quickest use for these items are simple square patchworks for the charm packs and/or a log cabin or strip-based quilt top with jellyrolls. However, you can also go the manufacturers of these items and find many many patterns that can be made off of these cuts. Some of my personal favorites include turning charm packs into the traditional "spool" or "butterfly" pattern and using the strips to do a split-rail, or churn dash.

If you go to my web shop, you can purchase jellyrolls or charm packs which support these cuts. A couple of disclaimers:

The edges of these are always pinking-sheared, so you always do get some extra lint.
Charm packs often will include large-scale prints that you will only see a portion of because of the 5"x5" limitation.
Most patterns also include additional yardage which can sometimes be difficult to match up if you don't buy it at the same time that you buy the charm pack or jellyroll.
Not all companies produce these quick cuts. Currently: Moda, P&B, Benartex, and Michael Miller offer some of these options.

If you have questions about how to use these or want to send a gift to a fellow quilter, this is an easy way to go, and I can help!

Historical Fall

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:04:00 +0000

For all the historical reproduction fabric junkies, a great announcement from Windham appeared in the latest trade magazines. Dovely will carry some of this fabric this fall. Enjoy!

Williamsburg issues license to Windham Fabrics

Latest fabric articles out of Home Textile Today News

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 02:38:00 +0000

Click on the image below to view the scanned articles.

As I head in to the July 4th holiday, I wanted to make sure to send out two short articles affecting those of us who really enjoy fabric. The first is an article dealing directly with home textiles announcing that Better Homes and Gardens magazine will be working directly with Jo-Ann Fabric to release an updated fabric line. The second article is an announcement that Cranston is working on a digital image library of their fabric lines. This may lead to a better searchable fabric match system for us who run short a yard or two of a fabric that we bought decades earlier. Let's all hope that Cranston doesn't just scan their home textiles and includes their quilter's cottons and makes the database accessible to the public.

I'll be in the store every day this week except for Wednesday. Monday I will send Ben to work so I can spend a day at home dreaming of searchable fabric libraries and more people making pillows from clearance Jo-Ann fabric.

Don't forget to read the latest edition of my newsletter. Happy 4th!

Sarah

If you give a quilter an icecream cone

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:42:00 +0000

Along the line of the children's books, I will now tell you the tail of the Tigerton show...

If you give a quilter an ice cream cone in Fond du Lac, it will not last to West Bend. If you wake a quilter before dawn, she will drive north on US45 and get lost a couple times. While she's lost, she'll try not to hit two deer but she will enjoy the sunrise over Lake Winnebago. If she finds her way to Clintonville, she will order iced coffee from Mickey D's because Starbucks hasn't made it there yet. If the quilter gets to the quilt show before it's open for vendors, she might take a little nap in her car. :-) If you ask the quilt shop owner to give a hand quilting demonstration, she will be glad to, but she won't sign autographs. If you feed a quilt shop owner a tuna salad sandwich for lunch, she might be hungry by 4pm. When the shop owner packs up her things at the end of the show, she will say ta-ta on her way out the door. When she turns out of the parking lot, she will drive less than a 1/4 mile to buy a grilled cheese sandwich at the BP on US45. If you give a quilt shop owner a map, she might not get lost a 2nd time driving south on 45 in Fond du Lac, but if she does...just give her ice cream at the DQ on south 45.

We're Moving!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:48:00 +0000

Starting Saturday, June 2, the store will be closed for about one week while we move it to the 2nd level of the current building we are in. Of course you can shop online anytime at https://shop.dovelyquilts.com/catalog/.

With this move, our hours will now change to: Monday - Friday, 10am - 5pm. We will not be having Saturday hours and we hope to add some evening hours in the fall. Give us feedback on what evenings you’d like us to be open. Please remember we will continue to have our open handwork night the 2nd Monday of every month including Monday, June 11.

We look forward to continuing to be able to service you in our new studio.

One final reminder: we will be at the quilt show in Tigerton this coming Saturday, June 9.

Artist in residence,

Sarah

One Last Chance

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 22 May 2007 03:20:00 +0000

With the winding down of the spring show season, you have only one last chance to see the dime-store, traveling show display and benefit from its dime-store style pricing. I will be in Tigerton, WI, June 9 for one day only at the Woven Hearts Guild Show. I am blogging about this to let you know because I may forget what I'm doing because I am still trying to recover from a fantastic quilt camp!

Truly the highlights of the spring have been:

Meeting the matching quilt-jacket/purse sisters
Continually running out of change at shows
Having no sleep at quilt camp

I will share more pictures and experiences from quilt camp in a later blog, but please be aware that Tigerton will be your last chance to buy any girl scout fabric grams until next year.

I have already placed fabric orders for my fall lines. if you are interested in what I'll be getting in, stop by the shop to look at the sample books.

Fabric~gram

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:13:00 +0000

As I sat and watched our April snow today, I couldn't help but think of May and flowers and Mother's Day and presents. And so I decided to share a favorite new way of sending fabric to friends: the fabric-gram! Simply reuse the packaging of your favorite treat and fill it full of half-yard fabrics add in a pattern and voila! A fabric-gram. Check out the website if you want to order one for your favorite mom. The samples here include reuse of my favorite snacking items, not surprisingly, they are all chocolate. I also threw in my favorite oldie-but-goodie fill-up-a-mason-jar-and-wrap-it-with-a-bow.

Don't forget April is Autism Awareness month and there are still pillow case kits available at the shop. See you next weekend at the Crazy Quilters in Mukwonago Quilt Show. The theme for this booth will be: old-fashioned dime store. Stop by and experience a whole new look and feel to our vending for the spring season.

Chocolate covered blueberries

Godiva~licious

Eat less~buy fabric~evil

Canned for later

Pink Soda POP

Spring break

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:09:00 +0000

How do you prepare for the spring? I apparently sew a lot, attend more meetings than I should, and squeeze in a whirlwind trip to Ohio to buy new things for my favorite customers. Ohio you say? Why? Because it is the home of one of the largest fabric warehouses in the midwest. I can bring you along for the ride.

Let's begin with the hotel with a business traveler's view!

That's right, when I travel, I travel in style. As you can also tell from the picture, it was a nice, warm, balmy 82 degrees. Surely the snow in the picture is meerly an illusion that is if I can see around the back of the sign that was directly outside of my window. Nothing but the best!

I entered the warehouse at 9 in the morning and almost spent an hour just in the templates room looking for the ever-popular tumbling block pyamid template. Go ahead, find it in the picture:

If you didn't find it, don't worry. I did--it's in the shop!

Then it was onto fabric. I had a shopping list from some of you out in cyberspace: more kids' flannels, more cheaters, something to go with the Nearly Insane quilt I started 5 years ago and from the lovely ladies at the church, the cheepest 60 inch polyester batting I can find. In the photo below, you can see what the oversized, larger-than-life cart looked like a the half-way point.

On the way home, the classic travel around Chicago moment happened at the exit of the Indiana toll road when at 11:45 at night, the car in front of me had to write a personal check to get off the toll road. Neadless to say, the tollbooth operator was not happy at the giggling that happened in the verhicle that pulled up to pay its toll. Ah! Only in Indiana! I wonder who they had to make the personal check out to? And what do you think the odds are that it bounced?

You don't have to wait to see all the goodies I bought on my spring shopping excursion. I will have a lot of them with me at the Cedarburg Quilt and Antique show. Stop by & say hi. (and you don't have to pay a toll)

3D Fabric Flowers

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:16:00 +0000

Fabulous Fabric Flowers

No need to water these flowers.

They will not grow

When you get tired of them,

Take them apart and sew.

Ben is making me blog again, and he tells me Sonji should be proud of this thing. She will have to let me know what she thinks. So I was one of the many women who did not receive flowers on Valentine's day. Additionally I had been toying with the idea of crafting flowers from fabric that aren't laden with adhesives and just collect dust. Thus from the Dovely workshop, also known as my couch as I was home with my ill son all day, Fabric Flowers! The first dozen has already been delivered in the doorstep in the middle of winter without any risk of destruction. The best part about these beauties: they can be taken apart and the fabric reused for whatever is needed. Order now! In other words, check out the website if you have a need for spring.

All flowers made of 100% cotton fabric and are uniquely hand crafted. Although they are not exact replicas of real flowers, the variety of styles mimic most cut flowers available in a floral shop. Flowers come shipped in a flower box or can be locally delivered in a vase. Additionally the charm of this never-dying beauty is it comes with a pattern to create a wall hanging out of the disassembled flowers. Two gifts in one! Many colors available.

A year for autism

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:32:00 +0000

As most of you know, Dovely Quilts annually picks a not-for-profit cause to highlight. This year, the focus will on autism. Throughout the year I will be working to help spread awareness and raise funds for both a local and regional receipiant. Autism currently affects roughly every one in every 200 children and our society is still learning how this impacts us.

Locally we will be supporting Help Autism which directs funds towards local children who have outgrown their birth-to-three coverage and fall into a gap where medical expenses and therapy often falls directly on parents instead of insurance. Regionally we will be supporting the Autism Society of Southeastern Wisconsin.

Again this year there will be ways you can help out raising funds for these two groups. First, we will have pillow case kits available in the store for $12.00. The kit will make one pillowcase that incorporates the Autism Awareness puzzle fabric you can find in the webshop. With the kit you may donate back your pillowcase to be given to a child affected by autism, or you can donate the pillowcase back to the shop to be sold to raise additional funds. If you do not trust your sewing abilities, but would like to a pillow made, you can buy the kit and give it back to have the pillow made for a child with autism. And if you're really desparate, and hate sewing, you can buy a finished pillowcase from the shop and either keep it for yourself and donate it back to be given to a child. The pillowcase project will last the entire year and we have included a printable PDF, simple set of instructions for your use. Thanks to Helen for giving me a quick lesson on how to make these fast pillowcases.

Throughout the year, I will try to give you updates on other opportunities to learn more about autism. Just last week ABC's "The View" had an hour-long special presentation that focused on autism. Watch for it on reruns. We will also have informational brochures at the shop. Nationally there are a number of organizations that work on awareness and networking on autism including CAN (Cure Autism Now). Currently the Autism Society of Southeastern Wisconsin is organizing their annual fundraising ball and Help Autism is working at organizing a fall golf outing. What the website for updates.

Good Old Singer and alone time

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 04:25:00 +0000

I hope your holidays all went well. I received many wonderful contributions to the fabric donation drive we run here out of the shop. In the end, between December 15th & January 15th, 10 boxes of donated fabric appeared! There will be very many happy church quilters in the near future. Additionally, I was approached to find a new home for a 1956 "touch-and-go" Singer. I'm not sure, but it appears to be one of the first, multi-stitch function Singers that was available for household use. It even comes with changeable disks for each of the stitches. I understand that my wonder at this machine may show my naivete in the realm of machine use. But I did get a few hours of pleasure out of this die-hard working machine.

In a related die-hard working theme, another great friend of mine, Susan (one of the many shop elves who never uses computers and will never read this post unless I print it out for her), handed me one of the most wonderful Christmas presents I received this year: a new copy of Mary Janes Farm. The issue is almost completely dedicated organic farming and simple lifestyles. And this month's edition has a special focus on handwork, stitchery, and aprons! Mary Janes Farm reminds me of a well-updated version of the old Foxfire Almanacs (which by the way is celebrating its 40th year of publication with a anniversary album). Wholesome living, simple approach to life, and taking time to just breath is something I shouldn't have to read about but is a good way to slip it into my daily life. And as Mary Jane says this month, from p.5:

How do you master such a thing? How do you cultivate your senses, get them back? Alone time helps--time alone when you turn off and tune in, unplug, focus, just you and the rhythm of your breathing. doing something rhythmic with your hands helps. Women have always known how to accomplish that, even on the fly. Why do you think so many women (and even a few men) have taken up knitting on subways? Knitting, crocheting, embroidering, and mending brings you to that restful place. The rhythmic moving of your hands holding onto quiet (thread) and focus (needle) gives our brain the kind of quick, deep massage it needs to stay healthy.

Of course I would add quilting to her list of activities that bring you to a restful place. And unfortunately, my husband would probably say, typing, as he just typed that entire paragraph in less than 2 minutes. It would have taken me an hour I'm sure. For those of you who are seeking out alone time, a reminder that a quilting retreat opportunity will be coming up this spring in southern Michigan where I will be teaching a mystery quilt. Feel free to check out the website and register: http://amigocentre.org/

Sarah

After the blizzard

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:12:00 +0000

Thank you to those of you who sent well wishes and stopped in to meet Liz Lois at her book signing. Hellen Sampson gets credit for the beautiful pictures included in this blog entry. Thanks Hellen!

Stop in the shop soon as Hellen will be bringing in a finished sampler using Fig Tree's fall fabric line. Also, remember that we will be closing the shop for our holiday break from Sat, December 23 - Jan 1st. We will be back open on Tuesday the 2nd.

You have a chance to meet the open handwork girls this coming Monday from 6pm-8pm. We will be doing a white elephant exchange of kitchen kitsch.

Dovely Quilts Thanksgiving hours

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Mast) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 05:19:00 +0000

There will be no rest for this tired girl. The shop will be open Friday and Saturday and I sent out an email to you all with these cute pictures to entice you to come shop at the store, but they were all hacked off of other people's websites. So my husband won't let me post them on my blog. And frankly my copyright fanaticism would probably baulk at it if I wasn't so sleepy. After the space would have been is a copy of the text. Hope to see you soon.

With fabric and holiday gifts on such great sale Friday & Saturday, feel free to let out your corset a little! Hope to see you at the shop. Hours on Friday: 10am - 5:30, Sat: 10am - 4pm. And remember, if something hasn't sold in the first two years of business, it is at least 40% off so that I don't have to inventory it again. :-)

Slinger rounds out the season

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Hochstedler) — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:02:00 +0000

Under the threats of snow another season of quilt shows comes to an end in Slinger. I want to thank everyone who stopped by to say hello and a big howdy do to all the HAND QUILTERS! It was my great privelege to walk into a quilt show and actually see people quilting by hand! Praise to the guild for including hand quilting demonstration and participation opportunities. This is of course the last quilt show that Dovely will be vending in 2006. We still have openings on our "trunk show" calendar. For those of you who have yet to have Dovely come to your guild, church, school, or other community settings with a selection of our goods, contact us soon. There is no cost to have us come, no expectation to buy, it's like a Tupperware party without the pyramid scheme.

For those of you who didn't get to see the show, here are some pictures.

The Dovely booth

Award winning hand quilting from J. Zillmer of Mercer

One hand quilted selections from L. Lukach of Milwaukee

And my personal favorite block of the show from D. Fabian of West Bend

There were also hand quilted pieces from Germantown and Hartford.
Truly a representation of Southeastern Wisconsin quilters.

We will now be preparing for our quiltscapes trunk show, inventory reduction sale, book signing, P&B fabric challenge and of course year-end inventory. Stop into the busy shop--we always have time for you!

The business of cotton

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Hochstedler) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:41:00 +0000

As part of my job I research a lot. I'm sure it comes out of my history background and I can't stop reading things, watching things or trying to find out more information about questions I have. An example is, this wonderful image and collection of photos of early cotton mills housed at Georgia Tech! Recently I had started tracking a number of professional cotton industry articles about the coming increase in cotton prices. As most of you know, the majority of cotton consumed in the United States is not made in the United States.

The most recent article addressing this interesting
economic phenomenon reemphasizes the current trend of fabric that is sold in the United States is rarely made in the United States, especially in the sense that the majority of base fabrics (know in the industry as "griege goods") are produced overseas. This combined with information in the last few months is no doubt going to affect the cost of fabric being sold in all quilt stores. All I can tell you is I'll do my best to hold the prices I have.

On a positive note, I've found two other pieces of interest that give another side to this issue. The first was passed along to me by my aunt-in-law who sent an updated article from the Smithsonian Magazine about the next tour of Gees Bend's quilts. The article reemphasizes that you can use what you have and still manage to create items of value and beauty--something that quilters are often either known for or are hesitant to do.

The other good bit of information I ran across today was on the History Channel. They were running a great piece about the development and use of cotton in modern America. The episode highlighted a few of the manufacturers left in the United States who are still starting from cotton and ending with a finished, sellable good. It was a refreshing reminder that there are some companies still operating on a work-local, think-global concept.

Just so you don't think I sit around reading and watching TV all day, Mondays are technically my community service day/day off from the shop/day with my kids. But I couldn't help but think of you. :-)

And they all came tumbling down

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Hochstedler) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 02:11:00 +0000

Thank you for everyone who stopped by and visited at the Oak Creek show! I had a great two days and met a lot of new folks. If you missed the show you missed a great guild on display. Wandering Foot's quilt show had a wide variety of quilters from the very beginning to the very advanced, and everyone of them was nicer than the next. Congratulations to the winners!

I had a good time previewing some of the upcoming new fabrics from P&B and Moda. As always, Funky Monkey sold well and I'm almost out a the shop, so if you have yet to pick up your Sock Money fabric, you need to stop in or email to buy some soon. Xanadu sold well and everyone agrees that the new collection from P&B is simply "charming".

My next show display will be at the Slinger Show Nov 4. It may be your last chance to pick up the full collector's set of charm pack/CD tins for Spencer Museum, A Day in the Country, and Faded Memories, so be sure to hit Slinger early if you are looking to collect them.

The quilt show ended with a big bang for when the guild started to disassemble the display: an entire row got misaligned and collapsed to the floor! Luckily no one was injured and all quilts were spared. Proof yet again, if you wait until the end of a show to see a quilt, you might just miss it.

On a closing note, this show was a particularly difficult one to prepare for. As most of you know, my family background ties me a bit more closely to the American Amish culture than some people. With the recent events in the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania, my thoughts seemed a bit scattered this week. I did find some relief in knowing that the community was able and willing to receive help from others which is always a difficult decision to make.

If you are interested in helping any of the families affected by the tragic events, please consider giving through the Mennonite Central Committee which has direct contact with local relief efforts. You can do that here in Milwaukee by giving at the shop, or around the country by directed donation to any MCC site or by looking for informational updates at mcc.org.