Hurricane Sandy

 We're all OK but Hurricane Sandy brought down seven trees in the back. Seven big trees.

The only damage in the front was a small limb (10 feet long?) that fell down and failed to harm anything on the way down or in landing.

It seems like the worst winds came up the creek valley, hit our hillside and did a lot of damage, but then didn't do much to the opposite hillside or the houses.

The first set of downed trees, four in total.  The first one to fall is in the very back (the roots aren't visible).  The first one was the lightning-struck tree: the tallest tree on the hillside. I knew this because it had been struck by lightning twice. It was starting to die a bit because of the lightning strikes, so I figured it was going to come down sometime and cause a lot of damage. Which it did. There are two trucks coming from the big uprooted roots, and in the immediate left foreground you can see the fourth tree to be knocked down.

Looking up along the lightning tree. The roots in front belong to the pair of downed trees. Dad and I heard these fall; it sounded like a lot of breaking, crashing branches. I would have thought the sound of four trees falling would be louder (admittedly, the wind and the rain were pretty loud too).

Trunks and branches. This was the path we used to get down to the brush piles and the rest of the woods. We might need to borrow a chainsaw ...

I think this is just a branch. There aren't any roots, it's just a random chunk of tree that fell from somewhere.

I only found one root structure so I think this was all one tree. (That's our neighbor's yard that it fell in.)

The tree that fell in the neighbor's yard. In the distance you can see the sixth fallen tree.

The sixth fallen tree.  It was obviously a bit rotten and hollow inside.

The hollow tree claimed a victim on its way down: the seventh fallen tree I counted on our hillside of the woods.

Looking past the hollow tree to Bill's tree.

The empty hole in the sky where the lightning tree used to be.

Tumbler quilt

In 2007 I started cutting out tumbler shapes for a quilt.

I put the binding on this summer.  It only took five years to finish ...

In between I had to lay it out, to figure out how the rows were going to go.  The cats helped.

Magic's black and white; Tabitha is the beige blob. 

I eventually got it all laid out, and the rows sewn together.  If it's not obvious from the picture, this is a large quilt.  I think there are about five hundred pieces.  Many were handsewn into pairs and quads, until I lost patience and it got too big to be an easily portable project.  Then I used my sewing machine.

Once I got the rows together I laid it out again.  I must have been measuring it so I could cut the back; I'm pretty sure I didn't put it down just for the cats to play with again.

That was, however, what happened.

Magic made sure I didn't have to quilt it alone. I just did straight lines, in the ditch between the rows.  The front's busy enough to not need detailed quilting.

Those books in the back corner of the table?  They're pressing leaves flat, so I could trace them onto scrapbooking paper and trace that onto the borders of the quilt.  You can see some of the quilted leaves in the border.

"I'm sorry, you were working on this? Why don't you just pet me?"

Pennsic!

In which the blog is abducted and used to post pictures from Pennsic.

I have been crafting this summer, even though I have terribly neglected this blog.  It's just that in order to blog about my crafts I would have to stop crafting.

One of my major projects was to quickly assemble enough garb to be dressed at Pennisc.

The Beginner's Ball

Dancing!

Starting a Fire Like a Moderately Intelligent Saxon

There were also classes at Pennisc.  This one was the most photogenic.

First smoke...

 Then the whole thing ignites at once.

Then it gets stepped on least we burn everything down.

The Grand Ball Setlist

A Pennsic Fan Club

The Oncoming Storm of Doom and Wind and Showers and Rain and Doom.

 Washing dishes by our camp shower (the orange stained white tarps) before the storm hits

 It got really windy, and then the showers came.

Well, really just one shower.  It blew up from our neighbor's encampment and landed on top of our shower, rather slowly and gracefully.  Fortunately our shower caught it before it landed on the people who were still washing dishes.

(our shower is the orange-stained white tarp)

Storm clouds.  Then there was a lot of rain.  Where by "a lot" I mean a pretty solid sheet coming down. 

  After the storm cleared there was a beautiful sunset.

I should note: before the wind there was a huge lightning and thunder display.  So like responsible adult humans we all stood out in the road and watched.  Much like how now everybody is out looking at the sunset.

A floating castle cloud.

 I like leftover storm clouds.  Especially sunset ones.

Two of the flamingos of Flamingo Bluffs.

Archery!

Ari did the war shoot.

This lady was assisted by a butterfly.

Setlists for the Mainly English Revel.

We had some crazy dancers and some crazy musicians to match them.

The Armored Field Battle.

  There are three ballista arrows in the air in the following picture.

I think I want a ballista now.


* * *

 There were complaints that there were no pictures of me.  I explained this was simply because those pictures were on other people's cameras, and it took me a while to get a hold of them.  But behold! I have gotten a hold of them.