Blow, blow thou winter wind

It's not unusual for us to get windy rainstorms during the winter, but the one that passed through Thursday and Friday was apparently the biggest one since 1993. We don't get named hurricanes through here, but we get hurricane force winds on the coast and tropical storm strength winds inland. It blew a lot of trees down, broke tree limbs, tossed trash cans and recycling bin contents, and taxed the electrical grid by taking down power lines and blowing transformers. Thursday night I went home at 5 and watched from the parking structure flashes of electric blue as transformers arced and blew. Some places are still without power even today. My sister and brother on the coast are fine fortunately. Pam said that the winds were so fierce it was blowing the fir trees on their property about like they were just bushes. She and my brother Larry lost power but it's back on and all is well.

Stash Challenge 2007

Wendy of Wendy Knits! is challenging herself to work her projects completely from stash. She's put up some guidelines of the challenge, which runs from January 2007 to September 2007. I think that's a great idea for me, since I'll be trying this coming year to spend my money reducing debt instead of yarn. This is just the natural fiber portion:

The acrylic chunk, sad to say, is just about as big, but most of it was of donations for the preemie cap project. The rules say nothing about acquiring tools though. Maybe I need a knitting machine....