Fire update

For anyone interested I thought I'd give a fire update. We did have more thunderstorms over the weekend which this time included rain in some areas, we actually got 30 minutes of rain on Saturday, what a surprise. And with the storms the smoke lifted and we had clearer skies - it's been wonderful - still too much smoke smell to open windows but it's such a huge improvement. With the storms came more lightning caused fires, I haven't heard much other than that they are small and being worked on. We certainly have plenty of resources here to fight the fires with the others still active. I'm also going to include the cost to date, in the millions, to fight them.

Brimstone Fire - holding at 2,372 acres burned, 100% contained, $8M

Big Windy Fire - 15,278 acres burned, 15% contained, $12.8M - I was a little a lot concerned when I saw a finger of burned area on the fire maps heading closer to us but my educated (slightly) guess is that it is containment lines on the ridge tops that were burned out to keep the fire from spreading in this direction.

Labrador Fire - holding at 2,020 acres burned, 0% contained, haven't seen the latest $$ figure

Douglas Complex - 45,411 acres burned, 48% contained, $35.5M

Whiskey Complex - 10,947 acres burned, 40% contained, $12.6M

Ok, so the recent scattered rainfall from a trace to 2" with hail does not signal 'real rain' as we're heading back to our usual dry, low humidity summer weather.  So the countdown continues - 50 more days until rain.

On the creative side to the weekend I did work on quilt blocks, sewed up an additional 40 of them. Did I mention that when I figured out how many more I need it was many more than I had guessed? I was ready to be done but I'm not - still several more partial days of sewing to get the blocks all sewn, then on to sewing them all together. I also worked on some small Christmas gifts which I can't post pictures of, and finished up that pair of socks I was knitting. I started the process of research for a weaving guild program for next spring on name drafting - have my list of magazine articles to pull out to refresh my memory on name drafting so I can come up with a fun hands-on program for guild members.....will also need to weave up some fun samples for the program. We have many newer weavers who are not familiar with drafting so I thought this would be a fun program to learn.