I wanted to show the progress on the wedding shawl.  The fix worked and it is progressing.  I am farther than the picture shows as I haven’t taken a new picture since this one, and as you know lace is rather unremarkable before it’s blocked :P.  When this is blocked those daisy petals will really open up.  I am on my 3rd ball of yarn and have 2 more to go, need to have this done by the 5th of next month, yikes!

I haven’t been online much lately, the 10th of last month we had what they call a Derecho storm, it is a very large and powerful thunderstorm that covered 100’s of miles with hurricane type straight line winds, it’s also called an inland hurricane.  In my area they reached 112 mph, a level 3 hurricane.  I’ve included some pictures of a little of the damage, these were taken a couple of days after the storm because it was really hard to get around on the streets for a couple of days.  I was one of the lucky ones, the apts I live in received very little damage, because the owner had just had to have the roof fixed from a similar storm the month before with straight line winds to 90 mph.  I was only without power for 27 hrs and so I didn’t lose any food, but some people were without power for 3 weeks, and it is very muggy and hot here in the Midwest in Aug!  I was without internet tho for about 2 1/2 weeks and my phone service was spotty.  The storm literally uprooted large trees or ripped off their branches or broke the trees in half, houses lost shingles, or parts of their roofs and siding. We still have branches and trees on the side of the roads for the city to pick up and dispose of and there are some side roads that are still closed to through traffic.  Not all the damaged trees have been cut down yet, a lot of them remind me of the poor Charlie Brown Christmas tree as they were stripped of their leaves and branches.  People are still waiting for companies to fix their roofs, and some lost cars to the trees that fell.  It was a mess and lasted for about 50 min, which is a long time, but like I said it was a very large storm that came through IA, ND and Northern IL, most of which lost their power for varying amounts of time.

Hope you are all well.