Home and faraway

Today's featured quilt was made for my eldest, celebrating her birthday several years ago. She asked for a blue and brown cozy, and I joyfully acquiesced with this beauty, which I enjoyed last night on their guest bed.

A deliberate play on words in today's title; I'm visiting my eldest and her family in our former stomping grounds of Silicon Valley. And I'm reminded of a fave book amid my catalogue, Home and Far Away, for how odd it is to return to where one used to live, or from where one originated in some vague manner. Because in returning to a house I know well, and beloveds I know even better, there is a sense of, "Dude! Did I actually live in this wacky big city?"

As well as granddaughters getting SO TALL and not being the wee sprites that pop up on computer screen savers back home. And where exactly is HOME? What does that mean in the grand scheme....

Most of these fabrics were acquired at Joann. But those dark blue leaves on faint light blue, from where did I get that precious print? 

For Sooz Noth, Earth isn't home, but it turns into the best place for her mostly due to the man she falls in love with, and the emerging faith that cannot be denied, especially when it turns up and grows all over a cowshed, lol. However that's fiction, and reality is me seated in my daughter's living room, the sun pouring through the windows, as I type an entry that isn't much about writing, quilting, and certainly not at all related to chickens. Today's musings aren't even about my latest book, ahem; instead I skirt around a story from last fall, a love story, a slight time-travel tale, a big dose of what happens when you are placed in a landscape not at all familiar and yet so entwined in your personal destiny. Sooz never imagined living on Earth. I never dreamed of dwelling in Humboldt County.

Wait, I'm not in Humboldt County right now. I'm in Santa Clara County, where I did live for over a dozen years. Maybe nearly twenty, if one adds the time from when my husband was hired just out of college to after our return from England, yet prior to moving to the North Coast. Anyway, it was a good chunk of time, let me tell you, and having family here keeps me partially grounded in this area, but not in a permanent way. My daughter and son-in-law want to retire where they lived right after getting married, in the San Diego area. And who knows where the grandgirls will wind up, my goodness.

What is home to you? I could wax on and on, but suffice to say, home for me is past a veil so translucent, the sparkles fill my heart with a peace beyond description. I carry that peace wherever I go, along freeways and highways and over hills and dales, lol. Arriving late yesterday afternoon, I avoided some nasty traffic via slender two-lane curvy roads, seeing parts of this area I'd never visited in all those months of calling it.... Home, yes, but maybe way-station is better. Even my beloved Humboldt County is a mere waiting room of sorts, a beautiful spot, yet, yet, yet....

As Sooz was sent to Earth, so I await different lodgings. Not anytime soon, LOL, or who knows? Whenever that last move occurs, may it be in peace.

Minimalistically machine quilted, I admired this cozy earlier today, then snapped the pics, hoping to incorporate it in a post. So, here it is, LOL. It's one of my first creations, maybe ten years old now. Have I been sewing that long? Don't ask silly questions, Future Me chides.....

I see Future Me rolling her eyes, because an epiphany occurred earlier this week that opened up my heart to writing, about which I chat further later. So, take this entry with all due respect and grains of salt that call to your heart, as well as pictures of the quilt scattered throughout this post. Because sometimes I go off on tangents, but one way or another everything is knitted back into place at an entry's end.