Storm!

Last night on the two year anniversary of the first Christchurch earthquake we had a once in 10 year lightning storm.    On our side of town the hail was relatively small at 1.5cm (5/8"), but it was enough to put a hole in the polycarbonate roof of our conservatory.   I think the car is ok, hard to tell under all the pollen currently coating it.  Over Ilam way the hail was 3cm in diameter (over an inch) and damaged roofs and cars as well as lots more conservatories.   We have an insurance claim in, don't know if it's worth claiming yet, we'll see how much it'll be in total when the guy comes out to measure up.  I know for those of you overseas this probably seems like a teeny wee storm to you, but here it's much bigger than we're used to.
I took a couple of photo's, the light is wrong in it as it was quite a bit darker than it looks.   Obviously the sensor pulled in a lot of ambient light that I couldn't see.

Just as the storm was coming in, about 1 minute before the real hail started

Hailstones, about 1.5cm in diameter

After the hail, love the formation on the left; very cool.

I guess we'll find out later in the season if it's affected our fruit trees which are all in bloom at the moment, fingers crossed it hasn't as last summer wasn't a good one and we got no plums and only one nectarine.

In knitting news I'm working on the cowl for Thomas

Windschief pattern off Ravelry, yarn is handspun Navajo plied Merino.

I'm also going to cast on a vest for Ian (I know, I'm supposed to work on CPH, but there's a KAL.....).  The pattern is the Zipped Up Vest from Ravelry which I originally test knit for George to wear and I loved the finished result.  Ian has no vests so I'm doing this one for him.   I am changing the cable pattern, at the moment I have a short list so can't start until I've decided on the final cable.  I'm using Skeinz yarn which should look great in this

Skeinz DK yarn, stash busting!

Finally we've got a new piece of tech on the way; no, it's not an I-pad despite George saying he wants one for his birthday (that's not happening, even if we won lotto which is highly unlikely).   We are getting a tablet, but it's a cheap Android one off a one-day sale website I've had good deals from before now.  It'll be handy for my knitting and for Thomas to take to gaming, but not so expensive that we'll be too worried to leave the house with it.    I have to say though, if we'd known the hailstorm was coming we'd have passed on the tablet but it's too late now.