Eastward ho!

Hi all! {waving wildly}  Hope you are all having a great day.  I have a very important announcement!  Okay, it's important to me, maybe not so much to you.

What would you do if you were offered a terrific job, much more appealing than your current job, with more money and better working conditions, closer to some family (including your daughters), and the only catch is that you had 4 short weeks to pack up everything, move 900 miles away, and be ready for that new job?  Well, I'll bet you can guess what we've done!  Yep, we are moving. We are thrilled, our family is happy, and we trust that things are going to work out.  It's never a bad thing to choose the bigger life, and that's what we're doing.

Friendship swap blocks that I received last week were the last things on my design wall, which is now only a memory.

There's a reason why "moving" is one of the most dreaded words in the English language.  Everything is a mess!  I've been obsessively making lists, and trying to sort things, and trying to put things in boxes, and trying to use up all our food, and trying to do the paperwork for my new position, and, and, and!

See--a total mess.  No one could work in there!  Everything has since been removed and this room is a bedroom again.

We will miss our home here so much.  We love Wisconsin. It's a beautiful state where we raised our family and lived for a long time. But we trust that our new home in Pennsylvania will be equally wonderful and we will make some great memories there as well.  Here's another wrinkle, though--we are selling the house here and so we will be in rented housing for a while, maybe months! This was never in the plan.  I am really not sure what is going to happen, but again, we're just going to trust that it will be okay.

My quilt books, ready to go!

Of special concern, of course, is packing up the sewing room.  This is when I'm glad I have a small stash, but packing it doesn't seem so small.  I sorted out a bunch of things to be sold, but have no time to sell them right now, so into a separate box they go.

Box o' fat quarters, ready to be loaded up.

The machines are coming with us in the car, of course, and so is some of the fabric.  All of my projects are in their own project boxes, so they are safe and ready to travel.  All of the completed quilts are packed, including my lovely new Odd Fellows.  It made me sad to close up that box, but I'm sure it will be like seeing an old friend when I open it.

So, I will be "off the air" for a couple of weeks while we drive two cars and a trailer to our new place and then carry 45 boxes of books into my new office.  (Yes, you read that right. I was amazed too!)  A tutorial for the new RSC color will post on Tuesday as usual, but after that I'm thinking it will be at least two, and probably three,  weeks before I can get any sewing even started.  Thank goodness I have ongoing projects, so I won't lack for things to do!

While we're in radio silence, I'll be obsessively reading your blogs and living vicariously through you, so be sure to post encouraging pictures!  Maybe I'll find time for some handwork, too.

That's it from here, friends!  Wish us luck, and I'll see you from a new area very soon!

One last look at the formal gardens.

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  and Finish it up Friday, because this is certainly a finish!