agilejack

I had thought I might put a little time into sewing my blue blocks together tonight but I was just too tired to dig into something that required a little focus. But I still felt like I wanted a little unwind time in my sewing room.

So I set the timer on my phone for 30 minutes and picked up the crumb pieces I sewed together a couple weeks ago and sewed them into larger crumb blocks. I think I’ll probably use these crumb blocks in a Frankenbag using blocks left over from my Fresh Start quilt.

I stopped with this size and shape because I don’t know yet what I’ll need for a future bag panel.

That combo should make a fun bag. And a Frankenbag is a great way to use up left over blocks.

You can find my tutorial for crumb piecing here.

For those of you who don’t know, a couple of years ago I made a tutorial for my Frankenbag. And if you go to my blog at http://www.agilejack1.com and search for Frankenbag you’ll get a ton of posts showing bags I’ve made and bags that others have made from my tutorial.

Then this…

I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head for a couple years. It involves a limited color story. It involves black and white. It will involve string piecing.

Surprise! It’s my favorite color!

I’ll have to pare down that pile of green fabrics to about ten. And I’ll have to pull out another bin of my low volume white/black fabrics and select the ones that are just right. And I’m not sure that little piece of jumble will do what I want it to do.

I went a little nuts a couple years ago and bought a ton of the low volume fabrics with gusto to include them into some quilts. I’ve had several ideas for using these fabrics but have never actually done it. It will be fun to see some of them come together in a project.

This is looking like I will charge forward with it soon. More as this idea develops.

I was looking for a quilt photo the other night and ran across this photo from 2018. This was my ENTIRE collection of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabric in 2018. One drawer!

It clearly seemed like a LOT of fabric at that time of my life. My KFC collection has grown to fill that entire chest of drawers, plus there a couple drawers in a file cabinet in my sewing room that hold my larger pieces for backings. And I don’t want to think about all the piles of fabric in various places in my sewing room. I’m sure I had no idea back in 2018 how insane this would become!

I have to work tomorrow. I’ll be on the radio doing a little fundraising from 2-5 pm. So I get a good portion of the day to have a little recreation. I’m playing pickleball at 8:30 am and will head down to Molalla, Oregon, for a sheep herding lesson at my trainers property after that. Rico hasn’t had a lesson for a few weeks. He is going to be so excited!

I’m going to have a pickleball lesson with my teacher on Sunday morning. It’s been nearly two months since we’ve played together! I’m really looking forward to getting out there and working hard at pickleball.

I’m getting so close to my vacation I can almost taste it!

It was another early morning today as I was at my offices and ready to be on the radio raising money at 7 am.

When I finished at 9 am I talked to a few co-workers who happened to be in the building then headed for home and another 3-hour meeting… the last one of those for a while.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Portland today. I managed to get two lovely walks with my boys… both in sunshine and daylight.

It doesn’t take many days like this in the winter to get the grass to start growing. I’m going to need to have my lawn mowed in a couple weeks if this keeps up.

After our second walk in the sun and a little bit of dinner I headed back to my sewing room to start putting together my blue quilt top. I thought sewing four of the ten rows together would be a good goal. So I tagged all my rows to keep them in the right order as I sewed them.

I always note on the tag whether row #1 is on the top or bottom of the quilt.

I pulled the blocks off the design wall and made little stacks for each row.

Then I pinned all the seams in each row and sat down at my sewing machine. I sewed all four rows together before I got up and pressed them.

Once they were pressed I pinned row 1 to row 2, and pinned row 3 to row 4 and sat down at the machine again. Pressing was next. Here are those two sections on my cutting table, ready to be pinned together.

I confess, I am a pinner. I have a little trick I use when pinning these long rows together to keep the fabric nicely in place as I wrestle that bulk through the machine. I nest the seams and use a vertical pin along the seam to hold that secure. Then I add a couple of pins horizontally between the seams to keep the fabric from slipping. I had been seeing my lower fabric slip away from the upper fabric which meant that the seam allowance on the top was 1/4 inch, but on the bottom it was only 1/8 inch. This method of pinning prevents that lower fabric from slipping away and prevents me from having to pick out and re-sew blocks. .

I place all the pins far enough away from the edge of the fabric that I can just sew like the wind without having to remove pins.

I love looking at all these gorgeous fabrics as I do the final pressing.

I’m not being concerned about the matching of any seams other than the seam between blocks. It would be really difficult to match the seams on the sashing strips from block to block. Some of the turn out pretty well…

Others don’t turn out quite as well.

But I think the fabrics are busy enough that no one would ever notice it… at least no one who is going to see this quilt!

I’m pretty happy with how the squiggle sections came together.

And a bit of a close up…

That’s pretty close!

I tossed that finished section back up onto my design wall when I was done.

I just can’t stop looking at this quilt!

`I took a break from work today and stood in my sewing room just staring at this quilt. And I I remembered something. I had purchased a 5-yard piece of the blue feathers fabric about a year ago anticipating that I would need a backing for whatever I made from all those blue fabrics. And voila! I found it at the top of the drawer where I keep my larger cuts of KFC fabrics.

I bought that fabric because it was on a really good sale. I can’t remember where I bought it but I’m pretty sure I only paid $6 a yard for it. That’s a great time to buy fabric for b backings!

Maybe I’ll finish the remaining rows tomorrow night.

I had to be in a Zoom meeting this morning at 6 am. So I took some Advil PM last night at around 8:00 so I could get a good night sleep. But on my way down the hall to get ready for bed at 10 pm I took a detour into my sewing room. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

I picked up my blue blocks and started putting them on the design wall. I thought I’d do a few rows, but no. I put all 80 blocks up on the design wall. And then I called it quits.

Several times today I stepped into my sewing room and tweaked, moved, adjusted. And I think I now have this where I want it and am ready to start sewing blocks together.

I really do wish you could see this in person. It’s so much prettier… airier… a little watery… really light and lovely. Photos just don’t do it justice.

I’m so tired tonight that I just don’t have the oomph to start sewing blocks together. So I’ll share some eye candy instead.

One of my favorite things about this quilt is that morning glory fabric. It ads a really lovely bright spot… almost like little diamonds across the quilt. I’m so glad I had a piece of this in my stash.

Another thing I love about this quilt is the little pops of color here and there.

Pinks. Purples. Greens. Turquoise. Sparkle! Yum!

And, of course, the other thing I love about this is the swirls in the sharks teeth sections. I stood there tonight and looked at every one of those swirly sections to make sure they were all swirling correctly!

Check. All swirls are perfectly swirly.

Even Bender looks good with all this beautiful blue!

I’m so tired tonight. I spent six hours on two long zoom meetings today. I have to be in the studio at the office tomorrow before 7 am. So I’m gonna be brief tonight and be ready to go to bed early.

Maybe I’ll have enough oomph to sew at least a couple rows of this together tomorrow night.

It was another balmy day here in Portland with the highs just over 60 degrees. We even got some sunshine this afternoon and it was mighty glorious. It was a busy day at work but I did manage to get my boys out for a nice walk this afternoon. .

I’m happy that I was able to push myself and get my pace down close to 19 minutes per mile!

I might not be able to maintain that pace for three miles, but I was really happy to see that I could get it down if I focused and pushed myself. That meant no stopping for sniffing. Only quick stops to pee and the necessary stop to pick up poop. . . Bender’s and Rico’s, if you’re wondering.

I was the host for my club’s pickleball play today at 5:00 so I had to bug out of work a little early. And I had a BLAST! It was such a fun, energetic, competitive and enthusiastic group. I enjoyed every minute of it and played really well! I felt really ON! And in control, which is a nice feeling when things get hectic!

I’m so happy to say that I’m also hosting tomorrow morning’s outdoor play session and it looks like the weather will cooperate, which is such good news! Then I have to high tail it home to get in on a long meeting with large market public radio fundraising people from across the US. One of my favorite meetings of the year.

After pickleball tonight I grabbed some quick dinner, iced my foot and then hit my sewing room. My goal was to square up the 38 blocks that I finished last night.

I had them all done in about 30 minutes. Here’s all the blocks I squared up tonight.

That’s ten blocks in each pile.

I really like to square up blocks. It just makes them look so much better. And I love this impressive little pile of shards that results.

Once that was done I pulled all the completed blocks off the design wall and divided them into piles based on the fabric in the center strip.

Next I basically shuffled all of these blocks into one big pile.

That’s all 80 blocks. They will likely go up on my design wall tomorrow evening. It will be fun to see all of the various fabrics up on the wall.

These blocks look so lonely.

I will be happy to start sewing these blocks together!

After breakfast this morning I hurried and got my boys out for a quick 1.5 mile walk. It was freakishly warm for January. And we even got a peak of the sun.

I wore a light athletic jacket, lighter than a sweatshirt, and I felt the need to shed it half way through the walk.

After our walk I got ready and headed out to play pickleball. On the way I stopped at a friend’s house to sign as a witness on an insurance document. I noticed that her daffodils had buds on them. It seems so early!!!

I played pickleball for 4.5 hours! I had a blast and played some really fun and competitive games. I started out helping with a small class for youth to learn to play. And then played for a couple more hours with the club. I’m going to play again tomorrow night and again Tuesday morning. Have to get a lot of pickleball in before our radio fundraising drive starts later this week.

I was starving when I got home so fed Bender and Rico their dinner and got mine on the stove. After dinner I took my good boys for another walk. Two miles this time. It was still really balmy out even though it was dark.

After our walk I laid down on the sofa and iced my foot and I nearly fell asleep. I forced myself to get my butt up and headed down the hall to my sewing room.

I finished adding all the corner triangles to the remaining 38 blocks and got them pressed.

I didn’t start squaring them up because I knew if I did I’d do all of them. So I called it quits for the evening feeling pretty good about getting these blocks all sewn and pressed after a very active day.

I was looking a group of the blocks that are all made from the same fabric. This is Philip Jacob’s Curly Kale.

Look at the gorgeous detail in that fabric!

One of the things I love most about Philip’s designs is that you can cut them up and each resulting piece looks like a different fabric. Each of these blocks has this fabric as the center strip and they’re all so different.

And those big prints add so much movement and visual interest to a quilt.

A busy week coming up. The weather is looking pretty good so I hope I can get plenty of time for walks with my boys this week.

I slept in until 10 am today. It felt really good. I needed it. And then I had pancakes for breakfast. It was a good way to start my day.

After breakfast, which finished a little later than breakfast should, I loaded the dogs in the car so they could have the illusion of an outing, and headed to my local quilt store to pick up three yards of fabric.

I already had a yard of this fabric for the sashing on the quilt I’ll make when my friend visits next month. But I decided to get enough to do all the sashing from the same bolt. I have had significant dye lot differences before and wanted to avoid that.

They had some new Australian Aboriginal fabrics but I didn’t buy any. I showed great self control. I figure my friend and I will go out there for some shopping while she’s here and I’ll go wild then.

When I got back from the fabric store I got myself and the dogs ready to go for a nice long walk. It wasn’t raining but it was still damp. Pretty typical for Portland this time of year. But the temperature was just a little over 60 degrees. It’s so odd when just a few days ago we were up to our butts in ice!

This is frog weather in Portland. They love warm and wet weather and on our walk they were singing their hearts out. You’ll want to turn the sound up for this video.

We saw a lot of fallen trees around the neighborhood. This one was so big!

It was actually up past my waist! It fell across the street and smashed a house. The woman who lives in the house was home at the time but wasn’t hurt. You can see the downed power lines to the left of that section of tree. The lines were on the ground all along that street. I assume the power company will come back later and clean that all up.

My boys were so happy to get out for a walk after being cooped up all day yesterday.

Look at those smiles! We actually walked just a little over three miles!

It’s so nice to have my foot feeling so good that I can walk that far. But I need to work on my average pace. I was down around 18 minutes per mile before my foot acted up. I’d like to get back to that in the next few months. It doesn’t help that I’m stopping and talking to people about fallen trees! That might be a big part of that slower pace!

When we got home I decided to spend some time in my sewing room before dinner. I counted my finished blocks, did some calculations and figured out how many more blocks I need to make to have 80 blocks for my blue quilt. Of course, I needed 48 more blocks. Then I dug in and cut all the centers I need, followed by the sashing strips and the sharks tooth triangles.

Heads up: I will be writing up a tutorial for these blocks once I have them all done. So keep an eye out for that.

Then it was time for dinner. I treated myself to some of my home made chili verde. It was very yummy and comforting.

After dinner I sat down at my machine and chain pieced all the sashing strips to those 48 center pieces. Followed by a good pressing.

That’s all 48 of them all stacked up.

I thought I might be done for the night. That was a lot of accomplishment for today. But I decided to put the corner triangles on ten of these pieces so I could even up the blocks on my design wall.

I need one more row for the width and four more rows for the height.

I have to say, that morning glory fabric is really something! Just little bright spots of sparkle.

Like sparking little fire works in a field of blue. I love them.

Here’s two fabrics that haven’t appeared in the blocks until tonight. The two in the center of this photo.

So, with the ten blocks I finished after dinner, I only have 38 to go. They will be really fast to finish because all I have to do is add the triangles and square them up. I wonder if I can get them done tomorrow. I really should spend a little time on my house tomorrow. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually do finish up the blocks for this quilt. If I do, this will be a fast damned finish!

I’m playing pickleball tomorrow afternoon. Since pickleball was canceled this morning because of rain, it will be good to get out and move around. First, I’m helping with teaching some kids how to play, then I’ll play with the club. I’m also playing Monday night.

My boys will be happy that the weather tomorrow will allow a nice walk. I hope to get up early enough to get us all out before pickleball.

I worked hard today and finally pulled myself away from my desk at about 6:30. Exhausted.

I really wanted to get the boys, and me, out for a nice walk tonight but it’s raining… just like it rained all day. So after dinner I hunkered down in my sewing room to chunk away on this new blue quilt.

I actually went back into my sewing room late last night after posting on my blog, which I rarely do. I finished eight more blocks, for a total of 16 blocks done.

Tonight I started with cutting the remaining blue fabrics I’m using for this quilt.

These are the four fabrics that haven’t appeared in blocks yet.

Once I had those fabrics cut I cut a bunch of the sharks tooth for the corner triangles.

I was extra careful to make sure that I lined up my squares with the right side of the fabric up and cut them with the correct diagonal direction.

I also cut a bunch of the sashing strips for the center pieces.

Then the next thing I decided to do was to fix the block that had corners that were cut incorrectly. I picked out the wrong triangles and sewed new triangles on.

Not my favorite thing to do, but I knew that I needed to get this taken care of or I’d end up making a new one and putting this one in the scrap bucket.

With that little annoyance out of the way I got into a groove and sewed up 16 more blocks, doubling the number of blocks I already had completed. Here’s all 16 blocks before they were squared up.

I thought I would stop there, but it was only 9 pm so I squared them up and tossed them up on the design wall.

I’m really loving how this is turning out. I love the blue fabrics and how you see little sparkles here and there. And the sharks tooth triangles are pretty fun! I’m really glad I went to the effort to figure that swirling effect out. It’s definitely worth the time and brain power I put into it.

This makes a total of 32 blocks done. I’m thinking this quilt will be 8 blocks wide and 10 blocks high. So I’ll need a total of 80 blocks. That puts me very close to half way done. It’s quite possible I’ll make some good headway on this over the weekend. It’s going to be a wet one so I’ll spend a good deal of it in my sewing room.

Here’s a little eye candy.

And one more just because I can.

I’m supposed to play pickleball in the morning but with the rainy forecast it’s looking doubtful. We might get a break in the weather in the afternoon that will allow us a walk tomorrow. That would make my boys very happy.

I have to run to my local quilt store tomorrow to pick up some fabric I need for the quilt I’ll make when my friend visits. Oh, and I made plans with my brother and SIL today for them to visit me next weekend. They are quite relieved they didn’t end up here during our ice storm and four day power outage. So I need to spend a little time getting my house ready.

Here’s to the weekend!

I’ve had a package of blue Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics in my closet for at least a year now. I had planned to make an all blue version of the Jewel Frames quilt. Here’s my very colorful Jewel Frames quilt.

The longer that packet of fabric sat in my closet, the less interested I became in making this quilt in a blue version.

But while I was working on my Fresh Start scrappy quilt I had an idea. What if I replicated that pattern but doing it in a less scrappy way, and what if I used those blue fabrics? I’ve been noodling over this idea for a few days and decided to dive in tonight.

So the first thing I did was dig into all those blue fabrics and selected the ones I wanted to use. I wanted prints that felt more light and airy as that’s the feeling I want this quilt to have. Here’s what I ended up with.

You can see that all the fabrics I selected are a lighter tone and they all have some white in the print. No deep and dark saturated blues in this group. This sort of gives it the airy feeling I want.

I wanted to make the blocks a little smaller than the 9.5 inch blocks in my Fresh Start quilt so I could easily make the quilt symmetrical while maintaining the generous throw size. So I pulled out my rulers to do some cyphering.

These three rulers allowed me to determine the size of the block, the size of the center strip and the size of the corner triangles.

With that all figured out I started pressing and cutting.

I had planned to use the royal blue Roman glass as the border on the Jewel Frames block with the blue and white sharks tooth as the wider sashing. For this block I’m using the roman glass as the strips along the center of the block and the sharks tooth for the corner triangles of each block.

Here’s the first completed block before and after being squared up.

It goes together in exactly the same way as my Fresh Start blocks. but everything is a little different in size. I cut the center strip from one piece of fabric rather than piecing it. And I cut it 4 inches wide rather than 3.5 inches wide. I cut the strips on either side at 1.5 inches and didn’t trim the strip before adding the triangle. And it worked well.

The triangles were a bit of a challenge. I wanted the squares where the four corners come together to be interesting and consistent from corner to corner. So it took a little bit of figuring out to get it right. Before I cut the squares on the diagonal I folded the fabric and laid the folded pieces out with the block centers to replicate the effect I wanted.

I wanted the sharks tooth to sort of spiral around where the corners come together. And I like this effect. I was happy to figure it out but it made my brain hurt a little.

I basically had to line up all the squares of the sharks tooth the exact same way and cut them all on the same diagonal. I took this photo so I could refer to it every time I cut these squares.

They will all be stacked and cut the same way to maintain that spiral. Sharks tooth points up. Diagonal cut from lower left to upper right.

Once I had that all figured out I dug in and made 8 blocks. They went together pretty quickly.

I’m really liking how this is looking. And it should just get more and more interesting with every additional fabric design I add. I really love the effect of that sharks tooth were those corner pieces come together.

But there is one rogue block that is just wrong. I’ve isolated the block in this photo. the sharks tooth in this block isn’t rotating in the same way as the rest of the intersections.

It must have rotated this block four or five times before I realized that it just wasn’t going to be right, no matter how many times I turned it. So now it was necessary to figure out what I had done wrong so I wouldn’t do it again.

It took a few minutes but I figured it out. When I cut the first set of blocks from the sharks tooth I turned them all right side up as I lined them up for cutting. With the second set I left half face up and half face down, just as they were stacked to cut. This basically means that for the fabrics that are right side down, the diagonal was cut in the wrong direction, changing the orientation of the print.

So half of these triangles are not usable and will go in my scrap bin and will probably end up in a bag or as crumb piecing. Luckily it wasn’t a ton of fabric and I will now have this mistake emblazoned on my brain. I won’t make this mistake again.

And, of course, a little eye candy.

We’ve had a couple of warm and wet days this week. There is water standing all over my yard and all over the streets. Warm and wet weather this time of year is perfect for frogs and they were really singing tonight! They didn’t make a peep last week when they were under ice!

Tomorrow is Friday. It will be a hectic day as one of the people on my team at work is out of the office dealing with a family health emergency. She is a key person in our on air fundraising drives and we have a drive starting next week. So we are scrambling at the last minute to make sure we’re ready to go. I’m hoping to take a breath this weekend.

It was up over 50 degrees today and we actually got some sun! It was so nice to get outside and have a walk in such nice weather. All the ice is melted off my lawn but there’s still a small patch of snow/ice on my patio. It will probably melt off tomorrow.

My lawn guys come on Wednesdays. They’re going to have a lot to clean up when they get here tomorrow. I didn’t lose any branches, but my back yard is covered with small boughs from the Doug fir trees.

I’m sure my rain gutters are full of this stuff as well. I’m happy that all the ice is gone so they can scramble up on the roof and blow out my gutters.

I had to toss out some groceries from my fridge after being without power for so long. I finally had the time to get to the grocery store tonight to restock. Once I got home I felt like I wanted to hit my sewing room but didn’t want to start a new project. Since I’m sort of at a stopping point on my new project that I cut fabrics for the other night, I decided to pull out my little storage box containing my scrappy Aboriginal trip quilt blocks.

There are fifteen finished blocks in that bin and a bunch of strip tubes that have been cut into pieces and are ready to sew together.

So I selected four sets and started getting them ready to assemble. You have to pick out the seams in various places in the strip tubes for each block to create the diagonal layout in the block.

All of this is laid out in Bonnie Hunter’s Scrappy Trip Tutorial. It’s a great tutorial that’s easy to follow. This is my third quilt I’ve made using this tutorial.

I did a lot of pinning and then sewed all those seams with chain piecing.

I got four of these blocks sewn together tonight.

Here’s a previous photo that shows a bunch of my completed blocks. It’s fun to see the diagonal diamond pattern emerge.

With the four blocks I made tonight I have a total of 19 blocks done. I’ll need 42 blocks for this top. That makes a generous throw size quilt.

The more blocks I add to this, the less chaotic it becomes. And it’s funny… I don’t think of this as a particularly colorful quilt, but there is A LOT of color in these blocks!

And you know that makes me very happy!

I played pickleball again last night and had an absolute blast! It was a really good group of players there. After going nearly two weeks without getting to play at all, I played three days in a row. I was on the schedule to play this morning but it was a little wet and I had a morning meeting that would have forced me to leave early. I sort of needed a break from pickleball!

It feels good to be back to a more normal life after so much disruption.

I’m so happy that our ice has had a bit of a melt. Enough that I was able to get Rico, Bender and myself out for a nice 2 mile walk before pickleball today. There are still some icy patches on the roads but it’s easy enough to pick your way around the neighborhood on bare pavement. It feels good to see the light at the end of the tunnel with all this ice.

We were all happy to get outside, even it it was during a light rain. We went four days without those dogs being outside for more than a pee! They’ve been good boys but they need some activity.

I played pickleball last night with my club at a large indoor facility and really had a good time and feel really good about how I played. Especially since it had been so long since I last played. I’m scheduled to play several times this week. Fingers crossed the weather cooperates. It doesn’t look very likely. We have a wet ten days coming up but at least the temps are rising.

After dinner I decided to head into my sewing room. I thought I might make the backing for my Fresh Start quilt but I just didn’t want to do it. I really don’t like making backings. so I decided to dig in and start cutting fabrics for my new project. This quilt.

The instructions wanted me to fussy cut all the blocks. I’m not a huge fan of fussy cutting. It’s a pain in the ass and it wastes a lot of fabric. Plus, I really like the organic feel of fabrics that are randomly cut. So I decided to fussy cut about half the fabrics and just cut freely on the remainder. Here’s some of the results.

And this last set was cut randomly.

See how pretty those big prints are when you just let the blooms fall where they may? I love them cut in this more casual way. I think this will be a good mix between the formality of the fussy cut pieces and the random blocks.

I used an 8 inch curve ruler I bought several years ago to fussy cut these blocks.

This pattern is from the new Kaffe Fassett book called Quilts by the Sea.

I almost always buy the Kaffe books when they come out, but I’m not sure I’ve ever made a quilt as it appear in one of the books. I find them to be great sources of inspiration and I get all kinds of ideas for fabric combos — even if I don’t feel inclined to make a quilt. I look at his books over and over and see new things with every turn of a page.

This book is my favorite of the last few Kaffe books. There are actually several quilts in here that I really want to make. And I love the one on the cover. Look how pretty that is!

I’m marking up this book with a pencil as I’m cutting these fabrics. The fabric names and numbers are listed on one page, and the page with the cutting instructions only has the number so I have to keep going back and forth between pages. I did get confused once for twice but didn’t actually make a mistake.

I got all the squares for the quilt cut tonight. I haven’t started cutting the borders and sashing. I won’t actually start sewing on this until my friend arrives in February so I’ve put all my cut pieces into one of my project boxes to keep it all organized and unwrinkled.

The large squares in the bottom of that bin are the squares that will later be cut in four pieces diagonally for the setting triangles. I won’t cut them until I’m ready to put the quilt together because I don’t want to expose all those bias edges just yet.

It was dark when I left for pickleball last night so I didn’t notice something pretty horrifying on my outing. I noticed it when I headed out for pickleball this afternoon.

A house about three blocks away from me, just across from the park where I walk my boys, had a huge tree fall and smash the back side of the house. I’m assuming this happened the same day that I lost power.

You can see the root ball of the tree and the broken roof.

You can see how broken the roof is from this view. and you can see the top part of the tree extending up and to the right from the middle of the roof.

There is a ton of damage to that house, but the Christmas lights on the front were shining bright today. I have no idea if anyone is in the house of if anyone could even inhabit that house now. That must have been so frightening when it happened.

I wish I had a bit more weekend. I could really use another Saturday and Sunday.