Ike and Knitting

As I said yesterday, my family made it through the hurricane pretty much unscathed. Here's the rest of the story...I was keeping an eye on the hurricane all last week. It started off with us on the extreme west side. Then we were smack dab in the middle. Last Wednesday morning I checked the Weather channel before we started school and we were on the extreme east side of the projected path. By the end of school that day I checked again and it had turned back and we were back in the middle of the projected path. My immediate thought was to get out. Wednesday night was the first Bible class of the new quarter and I'm teaching the 2 year olds this time so we went on to Bible class. We got to the church building early to make copies of a picture for the kids to color. Of course, people were discussing the hurricane, so I was listening to what they were saying. No one had any plans to leave. Of course, no one said I shouldn't leave. They were just giving their own reasons. Between that and what was being said on the news we decided to stay. The evacuations were being done by area, starting at Galveston and going north. They started talking about strength of hurricanes and how far north you should evacuate for each category of storm. Up to a category 5 we don't have to evacuate. That makes me feel better. And since the mayors of Galveston (Lyda Ann Thomas) and Houston (Bill White) did such a fantastic job evacuating and staying/and keeping everyone calm things were SO much better than when Rita hit. I'm so proud of our area because you never hear of looting, vandalism, blaming when things like that happen here!!!
Friday afternoon the wind began picking up like a thunderstorm was coming. I saw people out in our street. Kids were holding tarps or something and letting them fly out behind them like a cape. After dark our electricity started blinking off and on. Logan decided that the XBox needed to be turned off so that it wouldn't get the red ring of death. Also the satellite receiver would have to restart every time. I wasn't ready to turn the TV off for so many reasons. I wanted to watch the weather and I also wanted to keep some noise going. We'd kept our cell phones and Zunes charged. I fell asleep sometime after 1 on the couch, but I was up less than 2 hours later. The wind was whipping around outside. I don't know if it was real or my imagination, but it sounded like it was going in a circle. Everyone else in my house slept through most of it. I just sat here with a candle burning and knitting on an intarsia pocket for the little jumper I'm working on. I call it my hurricane pocket. The storm went on for several hours. I finally settled back down once the sun came up, but I never really went back to sleep. We finally took our frozen meat out of the deep freeze and put it in coolers. I had to work to get all the ice out of the deep freeze before it melted all over the laundry room. Once that was done I was finally able to sleep. I slept really hard for a couple of hours or so. All we had were some downed limbs and lots of pine cones and pine straw. Also the fence between our house and our neighbor's finally fell. That fence has been rotten and falling apart for years but they've refused to fix it. Now they'll have to if they want to sell it. By that evening we decided to pack up and go to my parents until we got power back. My parents had also lost power (2 hours northeast) but they got their's back the next afternoon. (Plus, they were connected to their neighbor's generator). Sunday night we called our house and our answering machine picked up.
Chuck came back home Monday morning. He was asked to check out several Mattress Firms on his was to see what/if any damage had been done. None of those stores had any damage. The biggest problem he had was getting gas. He stopped at a Walmart gas station and had to wait in line for 3 hours to get gas!!!!!!
My parents brought the boys and me back home on Tuesday. Costco and the Walmart nearest us were both shut down. I was able to get some milk. Yesterday we were able to get what we needed at Costco (milk and frozen food) and then we went to Walmart and got most of the rest. Walmart had almost no frozen or cold foods on the shelves. There was some milk.
We didn't have Bible class Wednesday night because there was no power at the church building. But it's back up now and we'll have Bible class and worship Sunday morning.
This whole thing has been so strange. But I'm thankful things are starting to get back to normal up here. Of course, my prayers are with all of those south of us who were hit so much harder!!

Knitting:
I've been working on Anouk ( knitty.com ) for my friend's newborn baby girl and the baby they're adopting that they'll have within the next month or two. This is a fun little knit. It's a little jumper that is not seamed up, but left open to wear a onesie or top and pants under. I'm about halfway through the second jumper. This time I'm knitting front and back at the same time.
Here's Rosemary's:


Here's the Hurricane pocket:


Here's what I've done so far on Maya's:


I also knit a miniature Christmas sweater ornament while I was at my parents. This is a super-quick knit. Probably just an hour or two.


Well, That's all for today. Tomorrow I plan to tell a bit about the people were with in Italy. What a great group of people!!!

Knit On and More Later,
Shama D