Afloat

I guess it was a bad week to send the Ark to the cleaners.

It's been nothing but rain and wind for days.  But, the water didn't stay long.  We watched it fall and flow through the back yard, or run off the front into the street.  When we emptied the rain gauge yesterday, we were at 9".  But, it rained all night.  Folks in neighboring counties are not faring as well as we are.  Lots of rivers are starting to flood. 

We have a few limbs down.  Nothing significant.  We take care of our trees and the extra rain this year seems to have left most of the neighborhood trees in good shape.  It won't take long to get ours cleaned up, after the rain stops.  The power only went off for a few seconds at a time, but it went off so often that we stopped re-setting the clocks.  And, every time it blinked out, I wondered if that was it.  I was sleeping the other night and every time the power would cycle off and on, my phone would buzz.  That woke me up and the lamp beside the bed is one that you touch to turn it on (and power surges turn it on) and it was flashing on and off. 

I can only imagine what is going on in Houston now.  My thoughts are with them.  That's deep water and they're going to be dealing with it for days. 

Rob had to get out on Saturday morning, so he went to the grocery and gas.  He had to buy premium to top his tank off because the store was sold out of everything else.  And, the shelves of the grocery were bare.  There was no meat.  Only a couple of pallets of water.  And, only one kind of bread.  We went on Sunday for our regular grocery run and the shelves were re-stocked, tho not full.  It shows how fragile our food chain is. 

Anyway, I couldn't do much else.  I cooked a little, but I didn't want to start too much in case the power went out.  I thought about cleaning house, but honestly, I really didn't want to.  It was pretty scary, even here and I wanted comfort.  So, I did needlepoint.  I had my canvas ready Friday night and Saturday morning, I opened the blinds so I could see out the window and I sat in front of the window and watched TV and the rain.

Remember the other day I talked about designing two pillows?  I wouldn't pay $50 for the yarn to make them.  But, I kept looking on ebay and eventually, found the slight misspelling that got me to the people that didn't know what they had or just wanted to get rid of it, and found that I was willing to spend $30 to make them.  Of course, that means I'm working with other people's leftovers, but that made choosing yarns to fill the spaces more challenging and fun.  If I only have a little, I can only use it in little places.    You can see the quilt blocks starting to form.  I didn't draw the shape on the canvas.  I marked center and am doing it by counting.  I've only made a couple mistakes so far.  And, I'm learning a LOT about getting lines to line up.  You can see all those points on the flying geese and center square in a square.  That took some thinking, I'll tell you. 

 

I don't know if you can see it, but this is the pattern for the blocks at the top in the sketch below.  Except I replaced the upper left block.  It was too plain, so I picked something else.  

 

 

Everybody have a good Monday!  Do whatever you do to ask your higher power to watch out for our neighbors who are STILL in the path of a harsh storm. 

Lane