We Almost Got Away Scot Free

Fire season is on its way out and I was hoping that it would have ended with a little less fanfare. Tuesday in the wee hours a thunderstorms rolled through and was room shaking, window rattlingly, overhead close. The first boomer woke me and everything else up at 3:00 a.m., not an unusual time for me. I had been dozing since two, listening to rain hit the skylight but this was a heck of a wake up call and not to be ignored. The round lasted about 40 minutes and then moved on, the second wave came in for morning feeding time. Oh joy, lots of noise but less rain, so think antsy dry horses instead of wet ones! The first fire call came in at 7:00 a.m. and after that I'm told was followed by 3 more smoke sightings in different areas. The fire and rescue crews split between 2 fires, one on Copco Road and one up on Chinquapin Mountain off of Coral Creek Road. Both roads are typical rural roads up here, which means dirt, often times private and with gates and always mean terrain that is hard on everything. It took ODF over an hour to get to the locations from town, so our volunteer fire department had located and started marking and moving equipment and fighters in but with fire fighting, the more the merrier and Oregon Department of Fire has the resources, the volunteer force usually hands it over and plays an assist role and that is all good. The morning was cloudy and dry and hampered getting spotters into the air, but in the afternoon a steady moderate rain started and didn't end until after dark.

Two of the smokes were never located and it would appear the rain took care of them. The larger fires were contained with the help of the rain that day and put out. Whew....with luck, more rain this weekend and an official end to fire season 2013. You can see a picture here.

That same Tuesday I had decided to do some changes to my sewing space. I wish Gene had been around to help me muscle some of the stuff around, but I am impatient and left to my own devices, managed to get everything but the old style big TV into the places I wanted. In fact I dropped said TV and I'll be honest. I had hoped it broke, but it is built like a dang tank and worked just fine afterwards.  Guess I'll have to wait a little longer for a new flat screen....



I added in another table for workspace, some old cabinet boxes for storage and did a general reorganization.



It looks tighter but really, that was unused floor space taken up by a dog blanket. The blanket is still there, migrated of course from its neatly folded position to half in, half out of the bottom cubby.



A sure sign Robin has been here and left a toy too!

On the sewing front, slow progress has been made on a second Sewn Square One Upline Coat. I loved the barn coat so much I decided to do a version in nicer non-barn wear fabric.



This is a Marc Jacobs creation that I got for a steel of a price at Fabric of Vision. The weave is very much like a monks belt and is smooth and tight and mostly cotton. These pictures were taken right after I got the collar and facings sewn in, my way.  Much easier too! It's at the hemming and closure stage now and I'm hoping to get final photos today. Wait to you see the lining!

In critter news, Ben is doing well. The puncture seems to be healing, he has not needed any additional pain medication and he's been a real trooper about the getting shots day and night. He must be sore though, there are only so many places on a goat for intramuscular shots. They are pretty bony little creatures even in good flesh like our two.

Miss Bea and Peter have good days and bad. They both go on and off their food at times and both have rallied and recovered. Peter is now 19, Bea 17. These are old, old dogs and every single day is a gift. The rest of the rabble is just fine. The horses getting fuzzy and fat, the barn cats keeping the early fall influx of rodents in check. We had a lot of grading done around the run-in barn this week. Joe and his equipment have made a number of visits this summer. Let's hope this is the last one for the season! Oh and my foxes still visit nightly. :-)

Parting shot: Time to rise and shine!