What a difference a few hours makes!

Last Monday I wrote about what was on my loom and how I planned to get quite a bit woven. Then, just about 6pm I was in the studio repairing knots on the pieces of the last warp I'd woven. Suddenly Molly, our cat, came flying down the stairs, like a bat out of hell, and disappeared. I should have known....but no, I took the pieces of fabric upstairs and put them into the washing machine. A few minutes later the storm hit. What a storm! It lasted about 20 minutes. It wasn't a tornado but a down burst or something, no funnel but strong damaging winds.

DH took over an hour to get home. This is the entrance to our subdivision. Just the entrance. Between there and our place there were several more power poles down, trees across the road, huge trees, etc. There are 2 entrances to our peninsula. The other entrance just had one tree fall across the road before our place. Until Friday everyone had to go out that way. This entrance was closed.

 Just after you cross the bridge over the Tennessee River and before you get to UT hospital there's major construction on the right. UT is building a conference center or something. It's just begun. They had one of those construction offices on site, really a small mobile home. Well, there used to be one. This is what the wind did to it! It wasn't a tornado. That came Wednesday.

 I tried to take pictures of our yard but our house is in the middle of several acres of trees so it's hard to see what came down on a photo. We had alot of branches, big branches, come down. In order for DH to drive to the house, we had to move a bunch of huge limbs that fell. Just to the south of our house this very tall, very big oak fell. You can see some of the branches near the top of the tree. I took it from the deck upstairs. It's quite close to the propane tank. On the other side of the tree is the power pole. When we remodeled in 1994, they decided to change how the power comes to the house. They left the pole in the woods, brought the line down to the ground and dug a trench to lay the power lines in. The tree fell over that trench. No power line was torn on our yard!!! However, we had no power or phone. Power lines would have to be restrung in order for us to have power.

 We did spend Monday night at home. It was late by the time we had everything settled and supper eaten (leftovers before they went bad!). Tuesday afternoon we moved over to Comfort Suites. I took along my Ashford table loom to put together.
What a pile of screws!!! I brought screw drivers and hammer and candles along to work on it. It wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. Used every one of those screws too!!

 Got the whole thing together and then put heddles on the shafts. I counted the heddles and decided I probably need more so ordered them from The Woolery right away. They should be here within a week or so and then I will finish assembling it. Right now the box and part of the loom that's together are in my van. It's a good storage place for now!

 Wednesday we had more storms. These are the storms we've all heard about that devastated the south. Each day we were gone we came back home several times a day to be sure all was well. In the afternoon I swept the driveway because they predicted more rain and we'd had so many small branches and leaves fall on Monday that I was afraid that the drain would clog if I didn't get it out of the way. I'm glad I did because we had some torrential rain. DH came after 8pm to be sure. He said at one point rain was coming sideways and got under the door to the studio. Then the hail came. Of course we don't have a garage. We are fortunate. I don't think the roof is damaged too badly. His jeep and DD's both have pock marks from the hail. His windshield was cracked and will have to be replaced. It could have been much worse. We found out in the last day or so that about a mile away, in our subdivision, an F1 tornado touched down about the time the hail hit.
In driving around the neighborhood a bit Saturday, we saw several homes that had tree damage. Everyone had trees down. We lost alot of huge beautiful trees, the well established ones.

One of the things that I did when I came home was weave on Thelma. I got several placemats done in the bit of time I was here. This loom is a bit closer to the window but not great. Having no power sure kept me from getting production done.  Oh yeah, that warp that was in the washing machine? I wrung it out Wednesday and hung it outside to dry to where it quit dripping, then hung it up inside to finish drying.

Our power finally came on late Thursday evening. We were thrilled to come home Friday!! I put that warp back into the washing machine to wash out the soap, etc that was still on it. It's now dry and I've assembled one of the jackets because I have to ship it tomorrow!
The other problem we had to solve was our freezer downstairs and the one that's part of our fridge. I thought you could save stuff if you didn't open the door for up to 5 days. Well, let me tell you, 3 days is too much. Because we weren't home when the power came back on, things re froze. However, it was obvious that they had thawed, melted and then re frozen. So it all went out. I did need to go through the freezer and get rid of stuff that was too old but really, this was over kill, especially since I"d just been to Sam's!
We're hoping to get our phone service back this week. Otherwise, we're back to normal. So many others aren't. Here in the Knoxville area, I"m hearing of more and more neighborhoods that will all need new roofs. Some had alot of windows broken as well, not to mention cars!
We all have stories to tell about this storm that took such a toll of lives. So many people lost their lives.
I can't complain about the inconvenience of not being able to weave for a few days. Shoot, we could be in Winnipeg where they had snow again today! It's kind of late in the season, but it does happen.

Here's to hoping for a more productive week!!!
Carol