Tornado Relief

It's time to thank my customers again.  I get the privilege of writing another check today in the amount of $91 to send to the City of Washington Tornado Relief Fund.  Thanks you for making January another good month of sales for the Whirlwind Sock pattern.  We're up to a grand total of $251 contributed toward clean-up and rebuilding efforts!

If you have been putting off your pattern purchase, it's not too late!  I'll be sending in donations as long as the fund is open, and from the look of our town, I think it's safe to assume the fund will be accepting contributions for a long time to come.

Another way you can help is by "favoriting" the pattern on Ravelry, "pinning" the pattern on Pinterest, posting about it in a knitting forum, creating and sharing a Ravelry project page linked to the pattern, or by uploading photos of your Whirlwind socks to Ravelry, Pinterest, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, your personal blog, or any other website.  Each of these things helps the pattern find more people who might be willing to help out, and doesn't cost more than a few minutes of your time.

Most of the destruction in our town is residential, so I don't drive through the worst part of it very often.  But an errand last week took me through one of the most devastated neighborhoods, and it took my breath away all over again.  The photo below is of the remains of the house of one of my son's closest friends. on a street that used to be full of homes, families, clubhouses, and mature trees.  You can see one small room (maybe a bathroom or laundry room) still standing on the foundation next to the car covered by a tarp.  His family was blessed to have gotten to the neighbor's house before the tornado hit because their house did not have a basement for them to take cover in.  I don't even want to think about what might have happened to this boy, his parents, and his toddler-aged brother if they had been in the house when it got destroyed.

The weather this winter has not been kind to the rebuilding efforts.  Many properties were able to be cleared before the below-normal temperatures arrived and we started getting hit with snowstorm after snowstorm.  But there has been very little rebuilding started yet.  I have seen crews at homes that are too damaged to live in, but still standing - installing new windows, ripping out carpet full of glass and insulation and replacing it with new flooring, and getting those homes ready for families to move back in.  Most of the people we know whose homes were completely destroyed are still up in the air about when they might be able to return to town.  I have one friend who just got a move-in date set before the 2014-2015 school year, and she is thrilled.  The weather has already made this winter difficult for kids getting to/from school, but having to live 30-45 minutes away from your child's school in a rental home and drive back and forth twice a day to transport them has got to be the rotten icing on this rancid cupcake of a situation.  I think it will be good for everyone when we start to see signs of rebuilding this spring.  A glimmer of hope that things will eventually return to normal and our friends will be back where they belong.

So thank you again for any contribution you have / will make toward this disaster relief.  Whether it be your money, time, or spreading the word about the situation proceeds from this pattern will benefit, every resident of this city appreciates what you've done.  This disaster has touched every single person in this city, and I know it has touched a lot of hearts outside our boundaries as well.