Cleaning up the ashes

It has been a crazy week and although I have numerous family and friends who have been affected by the fires, I have not known anyone personally that lost their home. All of my family have been allowed to return home and although there is major cleaning to do, they are all okay.

I was able to go to my SNB on Wednesday night even with the smokey air. Suzanne, Anna, Chris, Robin and I all met in front of a closed Coffee Bean and to quote Suzanne, "wiped the ashes off of the outdoor furniture, and enjoyed the company". Chris brought us some Halloween cupcakes and brought me some excellent beef stew with rice. It was the first decent thing I had eaten in two days. We all laughed about how when we all thought of things to evacuate, yarn was in the top. It may not be the most valuable thing but it is one of the most cherished. It felt really good to be sitting there after the couple of stressful days and to be among friends.

I've been stuck inside the house for a couple of days because of the air quality and am just now starting to venture outside. So what did I do while I was stuck inside? A lot of spring (fall?) cleaning. I took a look at everything I had left in my closet, after taking out all of the stuff I wouldn't want to burn, and decided it was time to get rid of some things. I now have 4 trash bags full of clothes that no longer are of use to me/my husband/my sons and it has felt really good to have some room between the clothes hanging in the closets.

I also took pictures of some of the stash to confess on Ravelry. I've got to upload the pics to Flickr and post still, but I'm taking it one step at a time. Ravelry really does take up a lot of knitting time. It's so fun though!