An eventful evening, and One Yard Fabric Swap update

Last night was ... interesting.

After a rather uneventful day, which I spent mainly sweating and wilting in the humid heat and fretting over the non-event that was academic work or any kind of coherent thinking, our evening was one of a kind.

7pm: It all started with the rain. One minute it was hot and humid and the sky was blue, and the next minute it was so dark we had to switch on the light in the house. Then the skies opened. It rained like I have hardly seen it rain before. Our poor old house, it seems, couldn't cope too well, because all that water prooved a bit too much for the rain pipes and within minutes the conservatory/glass outhouse (very old) was flooded.

Then it became apparent that not only the house couldn't cope with the masses of water - neither could the gullies in the road. This meant that what had been a road only minutes before rapidly turned into a river which, joy oh joy, flowed right under our gates and into the back garden. There it spread, the water level steadily rising, until it started to flood the little cottage in which we have been using the kitchen and the bathroom.

By that point, D was trying to shift sand bags to the door of the cottage to stem the flow of the water somewhat, but the damage was done. The street, and half our back garden were flooded, and water was pouring into the kitchen of the cottage. The amazing thing was that the whole thing was over within 20 minutes. The rain eased up, and the water disappeared down the gullies in the road.

I have taken pictures, but since we are in the old house right now I can't upload them. Will post some on Monday, though!

Well, all that happened around 7.00pm. By 8pm we were finally on the road to drive down to the Midlands. Around 30 minutes into the journey, we had a call on D's mobile. It was MIL, sounding rather strange and spooked on the phone as she informed me: "I've had a little accident. I've just swallowed some diluted bleach..."

WHAT?!

Needless to say, we turned back. She'd drunk the bleach by accident because it had been in a cup by the sink (don't ask me why it was in that cup in the first place - MIL uses bleach for everything, so she was probably soaking something in there) - had noticed that it tasted a bit 'funny' and had already rung the emergency line, so an ambulance was on the way to her. Arrived at MIL's around 10pm. The ambulance had just left and they thought the bleach must have been quite diluted and that she would be OK. We had a cup of tea with her and she professed that her mouth felt rather strange - kind of like it had been scrubbed clean... No kidding.

That's when we decided to drive down to the Midlands in the morning. It was getting rather late, we were tired and a bit drained after the whole Noah's arc episode and the bleach incident, and all I wanted was to go to bed. Which we did.

Now, roll on 3am, when I woke up with the worst cramp in my leg I have ever had in my life. Ouch!! Honestly, for a minute there I didn't know what to do with myself, it hurt that much. And I'm not usually that fussy. Because I wasn't all that coherent, D got really scared and by the time I had stopped groaning and twitching and had managed to pull my wits together enough to tell him that it was a cramp we were both wide awake.

Needless to say that I am less than wide awake now!

*yawn*

Anyway, that was yesterday and is hopefully not to be repeated anytime soon. Now for something entirely different - the One Yard Fabric Swap!

I have decided to go ahead. A few of you have voiced interest, and I have thought a little about how to publicise the swap further. Joni at Union Center Knits has already offered to post about the swap on her blog (thanks Joni!), and I think maybe that is the next thing to do. Would it be OK if all of you who were interested post about it in their blog at some point over the coming weeks? Again, no hurry - I am not thinking about setting this up tomorrow, but maybe we could aim for something like September or October...

Also, a few of you have asked me to clarify the rules of the swap, as I have it in mind, a little:

1) The idea is to send no less than 1 yard of continuous fabric, enough for a little sewing project, and, to make sure that nobody ends up with, as Alex put it, 'some nasty nylon' - cotton only!

2) Only send what you would also love to receive. So no palming off of unloved bits of fabric that you would otherwise stick in the bin! ;-)

3) Include other little presents - sweets, yarn, other crafty things, something you think the other person would like.

4) Suggested spending: around $25 (or around £15) max.

I am still contemplating using Swap-Bot for this, but in a way I would rather not, simply because it would be nice to keep it relatively confined and small... We'll see.


Preview of what's to come on this blog:
1) pictures of the flooding
2) spinning update with pictures
3) Sockapaloooza socks!! They are finally here!