Well...

Yes, I'm still here. Sort of.

Lots of happenings in katekwiltz land have occupied me since spring, starting with what I thought was a badly sprained ankle at the end of March (it's recommended to use ALL the steps when walking downstairs, don't miss the last two and end up on the floor!) that five weeks, three sets of x-rays and an MRI turned out to be a broken leg. When I do it, I do it up right.

Five weeks of crutches and six weeks in a boot blew a hole in spring and summer, and then Mom fell.  Again. A trip home to help Dad while she was in rehab for a broken pelvis and knee the size of a basketball made it painfully clear that I needed to be closer than a five-hour drive away. I'd been thinking about it for a while, dragging my feet because I've been in Chicago for THIRTY YEARS and I LOVE it here, love my condo, love my neighborhood, and love this city and its buildings and the lake and the life I've made for myself. But duty calls, and I'm the most logical and mobile offspring ("I can work from anywhere!" -- famous words I never should have spoken) to uproot and move back home.

As luck would have it, the neighbors two houses down from my parents were, at the same time, considering full-time retirement to their house up north, and after a few serendipitous conversations we agreed that I'd house sit for them. So I have started packing, and carting carloads of boxes and thirty years of my life back to Michigan, which isn't the simplest of tasks. Staging my condo is even more intimidating, given my style isn't exactly thirty-something city hipster and I actually like furniture that I don't have to put together myself.

Somewhere among all the chaos (it wasn't my sewing leg that I injured, thank god!) I finally finished a top I'd started long ago:

"City Lights"  98" x 84"

It's about 8" longer in both directions than I'd like, but I really liked the size of the 14" blocks. 42 different solids and tone-on-tone fabrics, with Kona Snow in the majority of them, others pale yellow or pale blue. I love this color combination, and the boldness of it. Can't wait to have it finished! The goal was to have it sent out for quilting so I could have it on the bed for staging, but that hasn't happened. It's packed away somewhere (Chicago? Michigan? Who knows?) and when I find it, I'll hand it off to the longarmer at my new LQS and I can begin this new chapter with a fresh modern bed quilt.

Starting over in a geographically familiar place that has changed dramatically in attitude since I left for college is pretty daunting at my age. I have a few high school friends in the area that I've been in contact with on Facebook, but I'm picking up a city life and lifestyle and dropping it into the verdant mall-laden auto-centric suburbs of Detroit, with my parents largely dependent upon me. Not sure how this is going to go.

The grand upside to all of this?  The 22' x 12' second floor of the house I'm moving into is going to be my studio. After sewing for fifteen years on my kitchen table and all my fabric stacked in plastic tubs, this is going to be heaven.

I just hope I'll have time to sew!