New Fabric and a Storm or two

Anyone in Melbourne in particular, will definitely know what I mean when I say “what a storm”. Even if you’re not in Melbourne, I’m sure you have seen the pictures and video footage.

The past 3 days have seen Melbourne come to a bit of a standstill and washed away almost by what they are calling “the storm of the century”. It is certainly the biggest, most terrible, however at the same time amazing storm I have ever seen in Melbourne, or at least remember. I think it started Saturday Morning, however it didn’t reach me until the afternoon.

Dad and I had gone out to visit my favourite shop Patchwork House in Hawthorn, because I was in desperate need of fabric to start a new quilt.

As I was doing laps around the store with the help of the very kind lady working there, trying to find a combination 9 coordinating fabrics that I was happy with, I looked out the window and almost did a double take. Here we were at 2:30 in the afternoon and it was pitch black like it was night time. A couple of minutes later the sky started rumbling and grumbling and all of a sudden the downpour came followed shortly by the hail and it was terrifying. We all stood at the window mesmerised as hail the size of very large grapes fell from the sky, crashing onto the roof and street outside. Naturally dad’s first reaction was oh my goodness the car, but luckily it survived unscathed. People were running everywhere and into the shop for shelter. Each time the door opened a gust of hail blew in the door and rolled across the floor. We picked them up and they were so big and didn’t melt for ages.

We ended up being stuck in Patchwork House for a good hour and a half, at least. I must say I thought it was a pretty good place to be stuck and we did leave with a beautiful bunch of fabrics and a new rotary cutter, however most importantly it was a safe place to be and Patchwork House was very lucky to be at the top of a hill. We were worried about my mum who had gone into her office in the city for a few hours and wasn’t able to leave because trees had come down and the streets were flooding. It did ease up later in the afternoon but rained all Saturday night apparently. Another storm then came late Sunday afternoon, luckily without hail this time but there was a lot of thunder and lighting all night even up till 6 o'clock this morning when I woke up and there was still lightning flashing through the curtains.

Anyway, I hope that everyone is ok especially the people whose houses were severely damaged and the other people who were in the city and at Moomba. I know it certainly wasn’t the long weekend we were all expecting either. I also pray that everyone’s pets and animals were okay too- they must have been terrified. We had ours locked inside but I did worry about the poor outside dog that lives in the house behind us and hoped that his owners had brought him in.

As I type this the rain is starting to fall again but hopefully we have had the last of the storms. I will also try and post some pictures of the new fabric later today.

Hope everyone is safe

Miranda & Charlie
PS. I'm sorry this is so long, I really should write shorter posts!