Saw this on Facebook

Hurricane Irene, Southern New England 2011

My son-in-law was trying to return home and found the street leading to his house looking like this!

A pic of the sky from my daughter's living room

We parked our vehicles out in front of my daughter's house. This is how it looked out the window.

I borrowed this pic.  It was posted by channel 10.

This is what we were watching (see time line on screen) until the power went out.

Getting addicted to sewing

 OK, so now Taylor & I have the sewing bug.  What happened was that I got a new machine a few years back; and unfortunately only used it a handful of times.  It's hard to explain, but maybe other sewers will understand.
I was so used to my previous machine that this one didn't have that "old shoe" fit.
Recently, with granddaughter Taylor getting interested in sewing, I put my mind to getting familiar with the new gadgets on this machine.
I picked out a pattern for a skirt which I thought she would like.
The fabric was from Tutti Fruiti, and coordinates, so I bought three colors in that brand.  What I didn't realize was how extensive the cutting, sewing and gathering would be.  It was all worth it, however.
The layers of ruffles would have been easier if I had just used one strip of fabric to make a ruffle.  Unfortunately, in this pattern, the fabric was cut into strips 40" long and 2.5 inches wide.  After sewing the strips for each ruffle together on the long edge, the pattern called for then cutting the long strip into 5 inch blocks, then laying them end-to-end and stitching.  After that came the gathering.
I wanted Taylor to share in a lot of this skirt-making, knowing that she would be so proud to put it together.  I did the cutting and gathering, and I had her do a lot of the straight stitching.  Her brother, Markie saw us and wanted to try my machine, also.
They both worked on straight stitches and did a lot of the work.
Taylor loves the finished product and I showed her how the elastic is fed through at the waist.  She said "Oh, so THAT's how they get elastic in there!"
After that, I had her close the opening in the waist band, so she would be completing the project.