This past Thursday afternoon I took off for Chicagoland to visit with my mom for the weekend. I remembered my I-PASS, but forgot that the Indiana Toll Road now takes it and didn’t want to hassle with digging coins out of my purse so I missed seeing the city at night. Ah well, maybe next time. (I did go back home that way, but it wasn’t night and wasn’t sunny and traffic was yucky and I sort of wished I hadn’t bothered, but I guess it was good to get some variety in the drive anyway.) Friday we went to the Greater Chicago Quilt Expo, which we’d first done two years ago. It seemed a bit smaller this time, but maybe that was because Mom is getting around a lot better now so we covered it faster; I suppose I could dig out the program from 2006 and compare the number of aisles if I really wanted to know. There were some beautiful and interesting quilts to see and there weren’t so many people there that getting up close was a problem like it can be sometimes. (I haven’t had a chance to sort out the pictures I took at the show, but when I do get them up in Flickr I’ll come back and link them here. I did put up a small set of the non-expo photos here.) Mom has definitely gotten a lot of her feisty-ness back, and she had plenty of energy for a tour of various quilt, used book, and yarn shops between the time we left the show and the time I left for home. That’s good to see. On my way out of town, I took a drive through my old neighborhood and it was strange to see someone else’s car in Dad’s driveway, but I’m grateful that Mom was able to sell that house when she did because I sure don’t think she’d be able to now.

(Update 19-Nov-2008: Special exhibit photos are here and competition quilts are here.)