San Diego Fires 2007, and a little bit of normal life

It's been four years since the Cedar Fire (and others) in San Diego, and each October since then, I've found myself getting up in the morning and looking east to see if the fires were coming. This year, looking east didn't provide my warning; but we had plenty warning as heavy Santa Anna winds were forecast for this week. The fires, north, south, and east of us, came along with the winds.

It seemed that San Diego county just erupted in fire on Sunday, triggered by an alarm that went off just as the winds hit the area. It was a Sunday late in October when the Cedar fires came our way, too.

Although we didn't see blazes from views in our neighborhood, we all prepared to evacuate if necessary. RVs began to appear in front of houses as we watched. We had moved our RV to the house on Saturday, preparing for a camping trip to San Elijo State Beach starting on Monday, so we just had to change our minds about what to pack in preparation for possible evacuation.

We packed much the same as last time; but in addition to our laptop computers, medicines, Bibles, my sewing machine, and a few important papers, I packed my collections of threads and fabrics that I've been working on this summer - newly made quilts, quilts in progress, and other things. It was a relief this time not to be employed and obligated to deliver work product to others who were far removed from the situation. I was able to let my alert systems concentrate only on what Lauren and I needed. We started packing Sunday afternoon; and because our alert systems were generating a good flow of adrenaline, it was after midnight before we went to bed and to sleep.

We were fortunate. We weren't evacuated, although we spent Monday night in the RV in a shopping mall's parking lot, just a few miles down Poway Road. People had been evacuated a mile away from us; and because we live in an area that has only one road out, we decided we should just get out of the way in case the fire came down into our little cove during the night. It didn't.

Fire does not discriminate, and it is unforgiving. It has whipped its way along the mountain tops and down the canyons, picking and choosing what to devastate. There's little the fire fighters and other disaster personnel can do at the onset of such a fire storm except to try to get people out of the danger area and help them get their most precious things, from livestock and pets to precious pictures and memories.

The Internet and cell phones are wonderful things. Donna, sitting thousands of miles away in Dumaguete City, was continually in touch with Stephie & Scott, Pat and Bill, Jana and Josh, us, and other people they are close to. They were able to watch our local TV station, NBC 39, stream the same information over the Internet as we saw on our own TV screens, just seconds delayed. Amazing! Our world is so connected now, and there's a lot of good in that.


Among the things I packed in the RV, in case we found nothing to come home to, were the shopping bags I recently finished. I was able to send a pair off to Judy & Steve and to a dear friend of mine this morning. Last week, we got a big box off to Donna, too, and it seems to be a relief on my mind that those things that have been sent away from us, things I intended for others, are safe.

It's funny the things one worries about. Normal worries seem so trivial. The blue and pink flowered bag is destined for a personal delivery to a friend of Mom's here in Poway.

I knitted a purse to felt last week. Here it is in its unfelted condition. When I start feeling calmer inside, I'll stick it in the washer a few times and see what happens. This is made from Paton's Classic Wool (Merino) and it's readily available here at the local craft shops.

Yesterday, after we came home from the shopping center parking lot, I tried to settle myself down by watching old Law and Order and Murder She Wrote shows - my normal routine for at least part of the day when I'm knitting or crocheting. I started a lacy shawl, and I worked on it until I went to bed last night. It took a long time to understand the instructions because my mind just didn't want to settle down. I think I have a better understanding of it now, so I'll take a try at it again today and see if I can get enough done to see the pattern start to develop. It's been a long time since I did anything with many yarn overs, ssk, or sk2p kinds of things.

We will stay quietly at home today. We had thought of going to a movie, but I don't think we're settled enough now to want to be away from our home turf for very long, yet.

Our hearts go out to those who will have to have other living arrangements for the foreseeable future. I can't even fathom it. I hope they are overwhelmed with goodness from others during their period of loss.

Who has time to blog when there's so much fabric out there!

I know my attention span is finite and this stage will pass, but I am totally captivated by needlework these days. I see all these knitting and quilting patterns, and I get lost examining their construction, thoughts of how the designer came up with an idea, how the idea works, how the colors or patterns play against one another, and in the back of my mind I think about blogging. Blogging just doesn't make it to the forefront.

Where to start?

This morning, Judy took me on a virtual tour of some wonderful pictures of quilts during our weekly telephone conversation. Judy recently started a zipper quilt, and I had never heard of that term. She took me to a blog called the Rhubarb Patch at http://rhubarbpatch.blogspot.com/2005/07/zipper-quilt.html and to another site, owned by Aviva Hadas, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/65592515@N00/page3/ to show me what she was doing. Oh, how do these combinations happen? What a lovely journey we had at both sites, but it was the Aviva Hadas site that could captivate me for hours on end. How does someone produce such a huge body of work? Wonderful stuff.

Last Wednesday, because RV trouble prevented a planned camping trip, I went to the Martha Circle at church. This group, lead by Carol H, makes lap quilts for patients in the U.S. Military Hospital in Germany. Although much of the work on the quilts is done by individual members at their homes, the group gets together one Wednesday each month to tie the quilts and sew on labels. I've been a few times, and it is a very satisfactory way to spend a morning.

When I visited Donna and her family this past spring, I brought home a bunch of her fabric (along with her sewing machine), and there was some patriotic fabric there. I immediately eyeballed it for the Martha Circle quilts and laundered it; but it sat on my shelves until now. The quilt tops are simple - 9-inch squares sewn in a 4 x 5 configuration. Inspired by meeting with the women of Martha, I cut out and put together five tops using Donna's patriotic fabric and some pieces of my own. I was more inspired to do that than to work on the Fasset quilt I have in progress.

Here's the results:


This print which I combined with the blue looked more feminine than the others. I think I liked this print the best of the patriotic pieces. It has the first phrases of patriotic songs, and it seemed more delicate. I liked the outcome.

The solid red 9-inch squares in the red quilts are from a poly fabric, and had I had some cotton in some color near this, I surely would have used it instead. I don't remember where the poly came from, but now it's gone and I will never need to try to figure out how to use it again!




Now, although I don't normally purchase patriotic prints, I will be on the lookout for them when I browse fabric stores. With the idea that I might find some patriotic scraps in the thrift stores (a great place to pick up odds and ends of fabrics once in a while), I took a little break yesterday and went to our local thrift stores. We have three pretty nice ones in one little shopping center, so it makes it easy to go from store to store looking for bargains. I ended up with a half a dozen pieces of fabric, ranging from 7" long to 2-1/2 yards, and several articles of clothing. I found some really cute cotton blouses that looked in good shape and a couple neat sweatshirts (a cranberry one for me and a green one, embroidered with Minnesota, for Lauren). How fun. We used to shop thrift stores when we RV'd a lot, and I enjoy taking a break once in a while and shopping our own locally.

Setting aside a project in favor of another is dangerous stuff. In the middle of working on the quilt tops for the Martha group, I also cut out four more carrying bags. I need one to put Amanda's afghan in, and I couldn't decide just which fabric to use. One thing leads to another, and I ended up choosing two pieces of my stash of heavy fabric and cutting the pieces for four bags out of them. I really like these bags for groceries, library books, projects - you name it. I don't know that one can have too many! Oh dear! Diversions!

Now that I've finished the tops for the Martha group, I'm thinking I'll get back to my Fasset quilt and then use the bags as an interlude somewhere in the middle of the next stages of that. I'm currently working on the half diamond pieces. I have each of them designed (the correct pieces chosen) and they're nice and neat in their little folders.


Lauren and I played with fabric for the border around each block last weekend. I've 99% decided to use a black border with a gold square in the the intersection of each border. Lauren's comment about the black, as he was evaluating his two top choices, was "I can see where some people will really like this ...," leaving the "and some people won't" as implied. But he's right. The patches are striking on black, but not everyone likes "striking."

We liked the blocks on the gold fabric, too. In fact, when I was laying out choices, this was Lauren's first pick until I came to the black and he became undecided. I believe the gold border is somewhat warmer.

I've left these two layouts on the end of the bed in our spare bedroom (the layer of patches on black over the layer of patches on gold) so we can think about them from time to time.

In the meantime, it's rainy today, but that only enhances my lovely view from the wall of windows in my sewing room. The roses are still blooming, as are a number of the perennials, and the basil plant on the table on our little back stoop is coming into blossom on almost all of its stalks. Such a nice thing to see.