More Wind, More Firewood

Earlier this week, I had my eye on a storm system, watching it come in off the Pacific, hammer Seattle, rip across the Cascades, and plow through Spokane before arriving in the Flathead Valley yesterday morning. This wasn’t a back-door cold front, so I wasn’t expecting the kind of windstorm that we got last March, but this storm was intense nonetheless. The weather station on top of Mount Aeneas, the high peak in the range just east of our house, recorded a gust of 101 mph yesterday.

The husband was called out early for trees down—around 5 a.m.—and the festivities continued to ramp up from there. We lost power around 9 a.m. after lines went down both north and south of us. The husband was on the fire call north of us for the downed power lines and described it as “carnage.” (He is not given to hyperbole.) County dispatch was swamped; some time in the middle of the day, they stopped toning out the rural fire departments for power line calls in favor of having them call in to get the next address on the list. The area north and west of Kalispell appears to have been hit the hardest, although damage extended across the whole valley.

We have a generator big enough to power the house and shop (keeping unnecessary lights and appliances off), so outages aren’t quite as painful for us. The internet was out, however, and cell coverage up here is spotty at best. There are three places in the house where I can pick up data, but even those spots aren’t that reliable. I was able to get some text messages out to the girls and to the neighbors.

I was in the living room, finishing the binding on Noon and Night (it’s done!) and the husband was in the kitchen eating lunch, when we heard a noise that sounded like someone driving a semi through the backyard. I leaped up and went to see what had happened:

A tree next to the woodshed sheared off about 12 feet up. The butt end of it landed on one of the trailers.

Sigh.

The husband changed into his steel-toed boots and got out the chainsaw:

Thankfully, the tree did not damage the trailer. He had it cleaned up within a few hours.

We kept the generator running all night. The husband got up every couple of hours to check on it and make sure it still had fuel. The electric co-op warned people not to expect to have power restored before the end of the day, but ours was back on by lunchtime today.

We’ve lived here the better part of three decades and I am sure that we didn’t used to have these kinds of windstorms, with this frequency. You’ll notice from the photos that we also don’t have a lot of snow. We’ve had quite a bit of precipitation, but it’s all been rain. (The husband is grateful.) We’ll see what February is like. And March is always fun.

***************************************************

Noon and Night is finished. I won’t post the big reveal shot until I have a chance to get a good photo. I think I’ll take it to church with me on Sunday; we have a couple of quilt hangers mounted on the walls in the fellowship hall where we display quilts from time to time. I will hang it on one of those and get a picture.

The husband is also working on the railing for the loft in the new shop—or as I like to refer to it, “The place where I’ll be able to hang quilts for photos.” He looked a bit baffled when I mentioned my excitement at having a railing there. I don’t think he was anticipating that particular use. Heh.

The new quilt design is coming together nicely. The blocks are fun to make.

***************************************************

I happened to run across Lisa Bongean’s YouTube channel the other day. She is the mastermind behind the Primitive Gatherings patterns and has been designing wool embroidery patterns and kits for over 20 years. She has a new book out (Martingale), and I was able to find a copy in town.

Remember when I was complaining that embroidery patterns assumed a certain level of knowledge on the part of the stitcher, and how frustrated I was by that assumption? This was the book I needed. Lisa breaks it all down, step by step, with detailed explanations and beautiful close-up photos. I’ve already been through the book once and I feel so much more confident about what I am doing. And her YouTube videos are great, too. Yay.