White Elephant Gift Exhange Isn't For Chickens.

SUMMARY: Or maybe it is.

The Bay Team's annual holiday party, combined with meeting, awards, and what's now become a traditional annual retrospective slide show, took place Saturday. The gift exchange is a White Elephant Gift Exchange (read our rules for stealing--er, re-ownering--gifts). Many gifts are beautifully wrapped with dog or Christmas related themes.

First time around, I stole a gift with a huge Rollover-type sausage and a blinky collar light. That was eventually relieved from my hands. At that point, my skewed sense of reality went for the plain brown wrapper. My theory was that the best gifts come in the plainest wrapping.

I was right about that--this time, anyway--as it included both a Lance Armsquawk squawking toy (find several bird-related sports figures here):

And this luxuriously soft blanket:

 By the time I had received this treasure, most people had already had their turn, but none-the-less it also found a new home very quickly and I had to pick again. I unwrapped one more, and it was the perfect gift for me (everyone started yelling about how it was the perfect gift for me--what makes them think I like blue tie dye?), and here we are together in my office the next day.

Team Small Dog was also there, and scored big with three new coats for the Little Black Dogs:

I'm sure you'll read about it at TSD when the time comes.

Complete list of labels

Wendy Does Tie Dye

SUMMARY: Contact info for my tie dyer.

For those who inquired about Wendy's tie dying, I checked with her, and she'd love to hear from people interested in commissioned work. Contact her directly at wendybruce (at) comcast (dot) net.

Here are reprises of some of her commissions for me:

	Tie-dye hankies March 2008
	2005 USDAA Nationals team (Run-TMZ) shirts at Scottsdale.
	Me in 2006 at Scottsdale in my 2004 team shirt (G'day Bayou).
	2006 team shirts with finalist team, "Three's a Charm."
	The backs of our shirts.
	Detail of shirts
	Yet another wendy shirt.
	Borderin' on K-Aus, scottsdale 2007
	Shirt details.

Complete list of labels

Tie Dye Rules the Nose

SUMMARY: Now I can clear my sinuses in style.

I'm one of those people who always carries a hankie, because my nose always runs. (Sometimes faster than I do with my dogs. But not faster than my dogs. Usually.)

Anyway, I'm also one of those people who hates white. I mean, it just gets dirty. Well, OK, everything just gets dirty with dogs, but with white, you can tell that it's dirty about 30 seconds after you get it out of the drawer, especially (but not exclusively) with dogs in the household. So, for me, no white hankies (or sheets, or towels, or undergarments, or shirts, pants, shoes, tablecloths, walls, or nuthin'--I mean, NO WHITE! The only reason I own bleach--and sometimes I don't, for years on end--is because sometimes I have to kill something).

Hankies are a problem, because for some reason everyone assumes that the fabric upon which you exhale your sinusoidal byproducts (good word, must use more often) should be white. No one asked me, or I could have demonstrated why white's a bad idea. Anyhoo--I've had a huge stack of lightly flowered white hankies for years--they were gifts, and although I'm not particularly a pastel-flower type of person, either, they were much much better than all-white. However, now they're all wearing out, and I need replacements. I can't even find little pastel-flowered ones in mass quantity.

I tried tie-dyed men's hankies in the past but they are wayyyyy huge. That seems to be the only size that the ubiquitous tie-dyers at all the Art and Wine shows sell--perhaps they think that (a) only men blow their noses? (b) only men would dare to use nonwhite hankies? Well, I just don't blow my nose THAT much, plus I have little dainty ladylike pockets in my jeans. (No one asked me about that, either.)

Fortunately (and this is where dogs come in), through dog agility, I met the fabulous Wendy who does fabulous tie dye for many folks in the agility community, and when I sent her a package of brand-new white dainty ladylike hankies, this is what I just got back in the mail. Every one is like a little artwork all on its own! I particularly like the one in the lower right; makes me feel like I'm on the Millennium Falcon, blasting my sinuses into hyperspace.

Blowing my nose will never have been so much fun!

Complete list of labels