The Weather's Just Ducky Here

We were fortunate to escape the freak tornado that devastated the small Kansas town of Greensberg Friday night and we are keeping all of the people affected in our prayers. The pictures I've seen remind me so much of areas of New Orleans and Mississippi after Katrina - I can only hope that these people receive better care and treatment from FEMA than the residents of New Orleans have received.

We had some very strange-looking cloudy skies on Saturday. At one point, I thought it looked like a tornado might be brewing because I could see some rotation in the clouds and the sky got a really eerie greenish color:


It started storming during the night, and continued storming all day yesterday:


Our yard stayed pretty well-drained, but I could see the creek rising in the woods in back of our house, so during a little break in the heavy rain, I wandered down to where the storm drain empties into the creek. In the 2 years we have lived here, I haven't seen it even close to being this high. This is not too far from the back of my neighbor's house.



It continued raining and storming all night and into late morning today - we picked up 6-7" in a little over 24 hours. If only we had temps in the 90's and some jazz and a few boiled crawfish, I would have sworn I was back in New Orleans, there was so much rain. It was supposed to start raining again during the night and continue all week, but the weather guys are all saying we're gonna get lucky and dry out for the next few days. The woods are entirely flooded and the coyotes came through the backyards this morning to skirt around the water and then this evening, some deer ran through the yard too. It's crazy and I am thankful we didn't flood.

I didn't get much knitting done this weekend (or last week either) and what I did manage to squeeze in were the 2 scarves. I did start a new project for my charity knitting group. As I stated in an earlier blog, we are making small gifts that can be given to nursing home residents for their birthdays and Christmas/Hannukah because so often they have no family and so receive no gifts. So I suggested wrist warmer-fingerless glove thingies and was given the task of knitting up a prototype. And it has to be simple enough for the many novice knitters who are in our group. At first I was going to knit them in the round, but when some of the ladies asked for an alternate method, I decided to try knitting simple rectangles which I will then seam up the side, leaving a suitable opening for the thumb.

We have been asked to use acrylic yarn due to ease of care. While I think I found a pretty yarn, it is very scratchy, non-springy and hard on my hands. But since it's not for me, I will use whatever is asked for. But part of me really wishes I could make all of their little giftees in the softness of alpaca and merino. But I guess the staff would complain about about handwashing and blocking!