Runs With Needles

Someone pissed off Mother Nature.

All afternoon today I was looking forward to this evening. I was going to knit my knuckles off and then do a blog post related entirely to knitting!

However, that was not how I spent my evening.

There was a tornado watch when I got home, so I found all of my emergency supplies (cat carrier, dog leashes, flashlight, cell phone, etc) gathered them together and put them by the basement stairs. (I do this whenever there's a tornado watch.) I wasn't concerned, though. I've lived here since 1999 and only run for the basement once. (For the local readers, I spent 7 hours in the basement the night Ellicott got hit by a tornado three years ago.)

Then I took some pictures of the approaching storm.







Just after snapping these pictures my weather radio sounded an alarm and announced a tornado warning and gave the location of a rapidly rotating thunderstorm. The location was over my house. Yikes. So, I threw the cats into the carrier, leashed up the dogs and took off for the basement.

The cats were not amused.



About 30 minutes later, I came upstairs and surveyed the damage. There was hail piled up in my yard and two screens were torn off north facing windows. And, my kitchen window took a direct hit from a hail stone. (You can see the hole just under the glare from the flash.)



Luckily, it's a double pane window and only the outer pane was broken and cracked. After I taped the window, I emailed my brother (his house survived three hurricanes last year so I consider him an expert on securing windows) and followed his advice.



(Yes, those are Priority Mail boxes. My apologies to the postal service, but it was the only cardboard in the house!)

I ran out of duct tape, so am going to take tomorrow morning off work to buy more tape and finish the patch job. There's more storms predicted for tomorrow and I'd rather not have the whole damn window shatter.

In knitting news, the Purple Ruffle Blanket is coming along wonderfully!



I'm going to keep knitting on this blanket and will hopefully finish it this month.

Kirsti and Melanie asked about how I like the Denise needles. I love them!!! I'm enjoying the Purple Ruffle blanket again and it's just so much easier to change needles. I should have bought them ages ago.

Thank you to Pioggia for reminding me that I actually do finish projects. Some days I feel like all I do is start new ones!

Felicia has the same source of hand pain that I do. :) Since I stopped using straight needles, I'm not longer having hand and wrist pain. Thank goodness. I don't want to limit my knitting!

posted by Kathy at 6/02/2005 10:55:00 PM