That's Gneiss! #203 ~ In which trees crash down and I partake in a stitching mystery
Plus: an Ecuadorean flower that will knock your socks off
Note: This newsletter has a lot of photos and may not show completely in your email. Please click on the title to read the full post.
Holy moly! We had an INTENSE wind storm Friday night and somehow managed to come through without losing our power. It flickered plenty and I was sure it would go out. When we took Rowland out for his final sniff around the yard we saw the blue flash of transformers blowing in the distance. The wind was wild! Later I heard more transformers going - the low woomph sound is unmistakable. The wind started right around 8 pm, and died down shortly after midnight. A lot of people will be without power for days.
Saturday morning it was time to inspect the damage. We came through mostly unscathed, with just a bunch of small debris to pick up in the yard. The large fir across the alley looks like a bunch of upper branches were stripped off, and a few small pieces made it to our yard. I found two and a half shingles of unknown origin.
Others had a rougher time. In the area I walked with Rowland, fences were down and there were a few significant trees with issues. Overall, not as bad as I expected. Later I ran a couple of errands and saw more damage. One area hit badly was to the west near the water.
Ouch. This place has (had?) chickens and ducks in the lower half of the yard. Needless to say, there were none to be seen anywhere, who knows where they might have wandered off to.
Close call! I’m sure many more people had similar sights when they woke up this morning, and while a lot of cleanup will be needed, their house is intact. I can only imagine how loud the “snap” of that tree breaking was!
Others were not so lucky. These people wasted no time in getting out to clean things up! The loss of that tree is going to let new light into their yard though, and some of the plants in their garden might be quite happy about that. This house has really cute gardens, including a lot of gorgeous dahlias along that fence.
I went out to run some errands and spotted this downed tree. Like the previous folks, at least it appears to be just resting on the house and not crashed all the way through the roof. As is often the case when trees go down in storms, you can clearly see the reason why as internal rot is exposed.
Today I made it to see the tree I spotted from a distance yesterday - WOW!
That’s impressive. It missed the houses, but did land on a car. Bummer.
The dark and dreary days are perfect for indoor activities like art, reading and stitching. I recently found out about Steotchalong, a wild and wacky mystery stitch-along with new segments of the pattern provided every Friday for seven weeks. There are 66 teams competing for the glory of winning the World Championship of Cross Stitching! I won’t get into how it happened, but I’ve found myself on a team of like-minded noncompetitive people. Despite our ho-hum approach, we are currently in 51st place.
After four weeks, the mystery sampler is coming along. If any of you would like to take a guess at what it might say, please do! There are several theories going around amongst the stitchers, and while some parts of them make sense it’s still up in the air where this is going.
At the end we’ll be provided with several finishes to choose from, or we can design our own. Previous years have featured The Golden Girls, Han Solo and Chewbacca, and sayings with amusing potential. I’m thinking we’re in that last category this year.
But wait - there’s more! There are weekly team challenges, and individual challenges peppered throughout. This is where the competition gets stiff my friends. Teams were added to the mix in 2018, and some are really into it. One goal of Steotchalong is to build community and it delivers. Last week’s challenge spoke to me, so I decided to give it a go. The task was to take a “vintage” piece of needlework and reclaim or reimagine it. It did not have to be cross stitch, and the only catch was it couldn’t be one of your own abandoned pieces, or one of your teammates. I found an old embroidered table runner sort of thing I had picked up at the thrift store years ago.
Just look at that blank space in the middle, just calling for something to be added…
Over the course of three days I embroidered five inch-and-a-half tall jump roping gnomes - there was a deadline to meet! Remarkably I had floss in my stash that was a very close match to the original piece.
The pattern was something I had photocopied from a book ages ago, and I added the words myself. A perfect motto for Steotchalong!
My gnomes did not win top points, but close! I checked the leaderboard and saw they were in the top 9 of all submitted entries. I’m pretty proud of that. And maybe I’m slightly competitive. No more than the size of a wee gnome.
Ecuador Report
Nolan and Mia made it safely to Ecuador a few days ago, and after grabbing supplies headed straight into the jungle with some friends. They sent this photo of one of the most amazing flowers I’ve ever seen!
It’s going to be hard to top that, but I’m sure they’ll see many more beautiful plants. They also sent a photo of the shelter they camped in.
Smiles all around!
On that happy note I’m going to end todays newsletter. If you’re here in the US, please get out and vote on Tuesday if you haven’t done so already. So much depends on it.
Until next time!
Competitive cross stitching--who knew?! I cross stitched a lot in my younger years and recently picked up a kit to see if I could get back into the hobby. I just need a 26-hour day.🥴 Love that old table cover and your new updates. Beautiful colors!
Y’all got the winds I usually get in the mountains. That’s no joke those winds. Annually knock out power for us. Judging from the trees age that fell it must be rare to have 40+mph winds up there. Those pics make me think of hurricanes too. Super glad y’all made it through unscathed! Happy Fall!