Windstorm 2008!! And other sundry items...

If you live in the Midwest United States, you know what this is going to be about. It's only taken me 10 days to post about it because I hate trying to put pictures in my blog!

Here's a view of the mess in the back yard. It ended up worse than this, because this was taken while the windstorm was still going on. We moved fast, though. A couple of those 75-MPH gusts were all it took to make us all head back inside!



This is a view of the tops of the trees. They're even smaller now. We have three of these trees in a clump in the backyard, and they all need to be taken down now. Some of the branches that came down were 25 feet long, so who knows what kind of damage they did to the trees on the way down. That will be seen during the next storm, but I'd rather not have a 25-foot spear through the roof of the garage, so we're checking into having them cut down. We'll have no shade, but we'll have no branches impaling us, roots tripping us, and rootlets choking everything in the flower beds. I really hate these soft maples. They grow super-fast, so they get planted everywhere, but they are terrible trees when they get big.



This used to be a Bradford Pear in the front yard. Oh, well. I always wanted a sugar maple there anyway.



And at least we didn't have to deal with anything like this. This is my neighbor's (former) tree. You can see by the branches in the background that the wind was still blowing pretty hard here.



All in all we got off pretty easily. Our power was out just a little over 24 hours, but there are still parts of the Dayton area waiting for power even now. We have a generator, so we were able to keep the refrigerator cold, though we didn't run it nonstop. I did throw away some things from the freezer that had gotten soft, but we saved the refrigerator contents. I plugged in the microwave long enough to heat water to take a spit-bath. I used the warm water to soap up in, then got in the cold shower to rinse. Then I washed my hair in the sink with the rest of the bowl of warm water, and rinsed with cold. That was bearable, but I now understand why people didn't take baths often before electricity. What a pain. It took forever!

On to happier things. Here's a shot of the sleeve of the new "Pirate" coat that I mentioned in my last post. Cables=ropes=pirates. Well, it made sense last Friday! (Maybe I'd had too much grog or something.) The pattern is by Jo Sharp, and I'm using Brown Sheep yarn, the name of which slips my mind at the moment. It has some mohair in it. As soon as I publish this post, I'll remember. Anyway, I like it much better than the tweed yarn this pattern called for. The stockinette on the wrong side of this is really  gorgeous, and though it looks complicated, I haven't had too much trouble following the pattern. The safety pins are for the increases, a tip I got from Maggie Righetti's book. Can't remember the name of that either. Sheesh. I hate getting old.



Our company found out today that we lost our biggest client, so it's a good thing I've been buying so much yarn and fiber lately, huh? If my hours get cut, as they almost certainly will, I have the equivalent of a yarn store stacked behind me right now. (And don't tell anyone, but I just ordered two skeins of Malabrigo sock yarn from a shop in Canada. One for me, and one to trade on Ravelry. Maybe I can score some more Sundara. Or Wollmeise.)

Speaking of stash. We went to the Woolgathering on Saturday ("we" being my daughter, Melissa, and her 20-month-old.) Note to selves: DO NOT TAKE A TODDLER TO THE WOOLGATHERING! Gee, I wish I'd read that note a couple of days ago. I'll save the details for another post, but in the meantime, here's a peek at something. Something wonderful...

I leave you to ponder the beauty and mystery.