Tropical Storm Debby

…is hanging out over Charleston because she has “nowhere to go” given a weather “high” to the north and northwest that keeps her stationary–and will keep her stationary for some days to come unless some wind develops to move her up the coast.

Meanwhile, while I’m writing, torrents of rain are falling as the bands swirl around over us.

Saturday night we had a thunderstorm that dropped 1.75 inches of rain. Since then the rain gauge has shown 8 inches of water–but it overflowed last night, so there was more. And now there is steady rain, which is often heavy.

A tornado touched down on Isle of Palms last night–where both of my sons live. It damaged a house and took out power lines, so one son does not have electricity at the moment. The electric company has promised to return power very soon now.

The other son and DIL are driving back from the Jersey shore (3 girls) and are about 5 hours out now. Right now they can get back to their house on IOP and they do have electricity. Flooding in this stationary storm is a big issue. If they can’t get home due to today’s rain, they will stay with me.

I took out all the saved chicken bones in the freezer on Sunday and made a huge broth–the packets of bones were taking up way too much room in my small freezer, so it was time.

When the broth cooled, I drained off the liquid and put it in the refrigerator. Yesterday I made the soup–and the broth had jelled so beautifully into consommé. The soup is DELICIOUS! So I’m ready if my son’s family comes here–and if not, I have food so I can “play.”

My noon dinner today–eaten inside, of course. All the porch cushions are inside the house to keep them dry.

Here’s the design wall right now: there are THREE projects on it. How fun is that?

On the left is the snuggly scrappy leader/ender quilt–it will get wider and one more row longer when I finish the 4th row of Prickly Pear on the right. The third row will be done today. Making the triangle rings takes time and I need 16 more.

On the bottom, I’m playing with “modern” Churn Dash blocks and the new Cat’s Claw ruler that came in the mail. These 2 blocks are 12 inches. I love playing, and goal is to see how I can make “modern” alterations to the Churn Dash block. It’s a challenge…from the modern group. And I have no idea where it is going.

And the hand-sewing (Big Stitch) project is coming along. It will be a wall hanging upstairs–it’s 32 inches square. Cathy Beemer taught us this Maria Shell method in our modern group’s monthly Sit and Sew. She made a whole quilt of these blocks with four quadrants, and I am in awe of that effort.

Now it is almost 1 pm. There are 3 more inches of water in the rain gauge. Folks here are worrying about the dry ponds filling up now, and the creek is about to overflow, which would impact my back door neighbor. Low tide is coming up, but the overflow water just does not have a place to go.

If the lull persists, when I’m done with lunch I’m going to take out my hearing aids, wrap up in my raincoat, and go out for some pictures.

That would be learned behavior from my father… He always wanted to investigate how deep the snow had gotten, or how high the tides were, and so on. And he always took us with him when he went out into the elements.