Yarn Along & Moore

I really wanted to blog a little earlier in the week, but first we were just being lazy.  ;-)  And then we...I... was overwhelmed by the tornado in Oklahoma.  You may recall that I have family in Joplin, which is like my 2nd hometown, and was deeply saddened by their tornado 2 years ago.  I also have beloved family in Oklahoma City...my 3rd hometown, if I can have such a thing....whom I was very worried about Monday.

I mapped the distance between my uncle's house and Moore, OK, and it's only 7 miles.  I'm assuming that's to the center of Moore, not necessarily where the tornado began.  So...a little too close to home, again.  Thank God, all family members are safe, even though they were pretty scared at the time!

Like everyone else, I'm am brokenhearted for all those who lost loved ones and their homes.  Lots of prayers for those poor families!

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I was too tired to blog earlier because we went camping with our homeschool group this weekend.    It was the first time in years that we had the freedom to join them on the annual trip.  It was close to home, only 30 minutes, and everyone was free!  Unfortunately, it was a bit rainy, and it rained almost all night Friday night.  One tent flooded, but the day finally dawned and the rain stopped.  It was overcast most of the day, so it was actually quite nice for the kids to play with their friends, and swim in the lake.  I'm sure you can imagine how many children were there with at least 20 Catholic homeschool families in attendance!!  It was awesome!

All day long we watched the weather forecast and debated whether or not to come home Saturday night.  In the end, we decided we had had All The Fun, and Sunday morning would just be packing up anyway to get home in time for Mass, so we left around 9:00 p.m. and slept in our own beds that night.  And thank heavens we did, because those heavens opened up and there were huge thunderstorms and very heavy rains all night long!  That was a lucky break.

Here you can see the book I've been reading:  The Children's Blizzard by Laskin.  It was very interesting learning about the beginnings of the National Weather Service and the whole meteorological aspect of this blizzard, but it went into far too many digressions.  I think people spend so much time researching a book that they don't want to leave anything out of the book!  It all has to go in!!  

It reminded me of Isaac's Storm, about the hurricane that destroyed Galveston, TX, in the early 20th century.  I liked that one a bit better, however.  As much as you can like a disaster book, anyway.

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I have not been working much on my ripple afghan because I got an Etsy gift card for Mother's Day and spent it on some roving and a drop spindle, so I've been learning to spin.  And doing a very poor job of it, I must say.  I think this is some of the ugliest yarn I've ever seen!

What do you make with crummy, lumpy wool like this???

I'm glad I chose the braid I liked the least to start on.  The second one is already looking better, and I have a 3rd package which is the prettiest and softest.  I hope that by the time I get to that one, I've improved a good deal!

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Evidently there's a weather-disaster theme to this post.  Sorry about that.  Totally unintentional.