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 Hi all -

Sorry for the long delay in posting. It's been a crazy month! As some of you know, the CalWood fire started on Sat, Oct 17 about 3.5 miles from my home. We'd already been dealing with heavy smoke and dark skies for about a week from the East Troublesome fire west of the Continental Divide. This picture shows the darkness we were experiencing in the middle of the afternoon on Oct 16:

The camera lightened the colors up a bit, but this gives you a good idea of what it was like here. And this picture gives you a good idea of the amount of smoke we were getting. Again, this was all smoke and was mid-afternoon:

It was crazy! And this was all from a fire that was a long distance west of us, on the other side of the divide.

Then, on Oct 17, I was doing stuff at home when I decided to check my email. I have things set up so that any time someone posts something to our neighborhood electronic bulletin board, I get an email message. When I checked my email, I had about 100 messages and when I started reading them I found out that a fire had started at CalWood, which is an outdoor educational institution just east of the road between my neighborhood and Jamestown, the nearest town to us, just down the canyon on the way to Boulder. As you can imagine, this was pretty scary news! It was extremely windy that day, as it had been for the entire preceding week, so I knew that there was a good chance that this fire was going to blow up! Before I could get through all of the emails, our power went out. This added to my fear since we don't have cell coverage at my house so, without power, my only access to the outside world is my landline. But luckily the landline stayed on, and I'm also lucky enough to have some really good friends who helped me through the weekend.

First, I called some wonderful neighbors who I used to work with and who have a generator and cell coverage and found out from them that we were under a pre-evacuation order. So I packed up what I thought I might need in my car and got the cat carriers ready in case we got an evacuation order. If I didn't have the cats, I would have just packed up the dog and left at that point, but it's harder to do that with cats. They had never been away from the house in over 12 years except to go to the vet and not a lot of people are willing to take cats into their homes.So, instead, I just got everything ready and started the wait for more information. I kept in contact with my neighbors and I also had a wonderful friend down in Longmont who was calling me periodically to give me what information she could find. I don't know what I would have done without my friends!! Still, it was a difficult night, trying to sleep in the dark house without a way to get updated information and with the wind screaming outside, worrying about how I would get 2 cats into carriers in the dark if we did get an evacuation notice in the middle of the night and worrying about not getting the notice if one went into effect.

The next morning I kept in contact with my neighbors and friends, and found out that another fire, called the Lefthand fire, had just started near Ward. This fire was also about 3.5 miles from my house, but this one was to the south. We were starting to get surrounded by fire, which is a problem up here since there aren't a lot of roads up here. In the early afternoon, our power amazingly came back on and my internet was somehow working, so I got on the computer and started getting updated information. Within an hour, I got an evacuation notice text on my cell phone. (I never got the notices on my landline, like I was supposed to, so I was lucky that the power and internet came back on!) So I called my neighbors to make sure that they knew about the notice, packed up the pets and left.

Again, I was pretty lucky to have more wonderful friends in Erie who offered to put my pets and me up in their home until I could go back to my house. Have I mentioned how lucky and grateful I am??? They took us in and made us feel right at home! Well, Lance and I felt right at home. The cats, Wesley and Buttercup, weren't as happy to be there. They spent the first evening hiding on top of the cabinets in one of the bathrooms:

Once they saw where I was sleeping, then spent most of the rest of the time under my bed. Wesley started venturing out after a day or two, but Buttercup is shier and she spent most of the time hiding under the bed. Poor little girl! But at least they were safe! And it was really nice for me to actually spend some time with other people. We decided to not wear masks since we were living in close quarters and we had all been very good about limiting our contact with others. So, we just extended our bubble to include each other for a little while. It was so wonderful!!

We ended up staying at my friends' house for four days. Our incredible firefighters worked hard to get the fire under control and we were allowed back into our houses on Thursday evening. We were even lucky enough to have the power back on when we got home. The firefighters and sheriff worked hard to get us back into our houses so we could winterize before the big winter storm came in on Saturday, bringing about a foot of snow and temperatures near 0. They knew that we needed to get back into our homes to open up pipes to prevent freezing and were working on finding a way to let us back in temporarily, but ended up having enough control of the fire to let us back in permanently instead. To add to the "fun," on Thursday night the East Troublesome fire blew up and actually jumped the Continental Divide about 20 miles from my house and they ordered evacuations of Estes Park. Did I mention that this month has been crazy??

The winter storm was a big help with the fires, although it's going to be a while still before even the smaller local fires are actually put all the way out. The Lefthand fire is 100% contained and the CalWood fire is 76% contained, with the other 24% of the boundary being in terrain that is too rugged to build a containment line but is near a road that should keep the fire from spreading into residential areas. These fires are not expected to cause any more damage. I let the Boulder Office of Emergency Management know that I didn't receive the expected evacuation notices on my landline and they are working on trying to figure out the problem, so hopefully I'll get the notices if this happens again, which is likely with the current state of global warming. So now we're just getting back to normal.

If you made it this far in this post, I'll reward you with some project progress. First, I was able to finish my Iva sweater designed by Rita Maassen:

Didn't that turn out nice? There's a little mistake in the cable in the yoke, but it's hard to see so it's not a big deal. I'm really enjoying knitting sweaters, so I started working on the Westbound Car Coat pattern by Lorna Miser.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this is a cardigan that is knit from the top down. The picture shows the back of the sweater. I've just gotten to the point where the sleeves separate from the body. This is another kit that I bought from Bluprint some time ago when it was on sale. I'm going to really miss these cheap kits that we used to be able to get from Bluprint!

I also received the September installment of my Jimmy Beans Wool shawl club project. This is the Coral Coast Wrap designed by Ambah O'Brien. I hadn't knit the August installment yet, so I got both installments done this time:

I think it's looking pretty good!

Finally, I made progress on my two Halloween advent calendar projects. The first project is the Haunted Handwarmers designed by Amy Gunderson. This calendar has 13 packages. I got it started, but haven't had time to finish this one yet:

The other calendar project is the Cowl-O-Ween cowl, also designed by Amy Gunderson. This calendar has 31 packages, so it takes you all the way to Halloween. I got behind while we were evacuated, but I've been working on this one since we got back and I was able to get back on track:

Tomorrow's package will have the last ball of yarn for finishing the cowl, then Saturday I'll get a little surprise package. We've already gotten several fun little surprises so I'm looking forward to seeing what we get then. Here are a couple of the surprises that were included:

I've really enjoyed these Halloween projects!

Well, that's about it for me. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy!!

Nancy