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Jimbo JIMBO JIMBO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I am laughing remembering that performance while typing this! Gurl, I could watch that every night for a week and not get tired of it.

Stunningly, I completely agreed with the top two, but some special props to Alexis for singing live...that is so much harder than it looks. Lip sync being a tie felt correct. It was such a joy to get the full LaLa Ri Experience at last, and in that spectacular wisp of a costume.

This episode was so much better than I was expecting, great to see all the queens again, and in their respective elements.

Where I was, somewhat inland and elevated, the worst thing that might happen during the hurricane itself would have been high winds or a tornado. So possible broken windows or a tree falling over on the house. For the worst case there, I needed a tornado shelter, which unfortunately I didn't have. Coming from the midwest, that always made me a bit nervous, but I had a closet that was central that I'd have used if needed.

The worst things were the after affects...the prolonged power outage during a hot spell with 100% humidity., local flooding limiting critical services access and contaminating the water supply, and dense clouds of mosquitos.

I did actually live there during Tropical Storm Allison, which was "just" a tropical storm, but stalled over the city for two days and dumped record amounts of rain, causing catastrophic flooding. Among many other things, it flooded the major hospitals downtown, shutting down their emergency rooms for months, and destroying heavy basement/bottom floor equipment like MRI machines and CAT scanners. For months after the storm, newscasters would daily remind people to be extra careful as we had limited emergency room capacity, and most patients were (ironically) being re-routed to UTMB Galveston Hospital, which had suffered no damage. It took upwards of a year for the downtown hospitals to get themselves back to normal, and these were large, well funded institutions.

So, I guess the lesson from that story is that the knock-on effects can be difficult to predict sometimes. In general, it is good to prep to not have access to critical services, or at least thing about where your alternatives are if the ones close to you become unavailable.

Oh, and if you're going to do a test run, do yourself a favor and do the first one on a nice day. Doing it during an extreme is on hard mode, and I guarantee you'll find a myriad of little things just during nice weather. Also, if your most likely disaster is cold, I'd look into the Buddy heaters. I have both the little and big one, and have used both on power-out cold days. Their downfall is that they add significant moisture to the air, but they do warm things up and are very storable. Purchase with a CO detector, I've always run mine with one, never had it go off, but important to have. Also, if you have pets, watch them like hawks while running it as the flame is not entirely covered.

And have fun! Doing the test run is kind of like camping in your house. Neat experience, if you like learning and seeing the world in new ways.

I lived in a similar situation in Houston suburbs for a few years. The main thing to prep for there was hurricanes. You'd potentially not have electricity for a few weeks, and possibly not clean water (not that the water was ever good there), so that's what I prepared for.

Take a look at what the most likely disasters are in your area. Power out during cold? Heat? Water has a boil order? Forest fires? And prep for that. For example, forest fires you need masks and a good filter system, possibly a way to seal your windows more securely.

When you say you have food for a week, make sure that is food that you can either prepare without electricity, or that you have a safe alternative method of cooking, and that you have sufficient fuel.

And the best thing I can advise is to dry run it. Assume your biggest local risk is power outage. Try 24 hours simulated without power. You don't have to turn off the main breaker and ruin everything in your fridge...just turn off EVERYTHING you can, and don't use electric. You cannot charge your phone, you cannot run the air/heat, you cannot run a fan, you cannot do laundry, you cannot turn on lights, you have no hot water, put some painter's tape on the fridge so you don't open it (what I'd do during a short blackout to try to save things as long as possible), you cannot use the coffee maker or microwave, etc., and see what happens. You'll find out very, very quickly some of the little things you need, that can make that situation much better.

Your friend's cat is a supermodel! They're giving some Blue Steel right there!

What a fun project, it looks beautiful. Love it!

You can definitely do this. Before you choose a final pattern and yarn, I'd definitely coordinate with your sister to make sure she likes the choices, and they match her dress/theme. Matching it to her dress choice is actually an opportunity to make the item even more unique and special for her...like adding some bead edging accents that match a sparkle or pearl accent on her dress.

For the knitting itself, a few pieces of advice:

-Do a small test piece with the yarn/needles you're planning to use. This will teach you how to start a pi shawl (fiddly if your first time), if you want more slippery/sticky/blunt/pointy needles, and let you see how it blocks out. This can be your memory doily for your sister's big day, or perhaps give it to your mother (if you're close) or to the bride as an additional memory.

-Lifelines, lifelines, lifelines. I'm pretty cherry about dropping down and fixing complex patterns, but lace is extra challenging because of the fine yarn and the fact that the stitches are often harder to read before blocking.

-I love Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi shawls. But be aware that the outer rounds take FOREVER. So when you've got half the radius done, you are not halfway through. You still have lots and lots (and lots) to go. Just be aware of that from a time management perspective.

Good luck, and I hope your sister and you both love the pattern and yarn that you choose!

If I'm really at odds and just need something to keep my hands busy (but isn't a ton of commitment) a tea towel. Two inexpensive skeins of cotton, needles aren't huge or tiny, no fit issues just a general size-ish, and can get weird with colour and texture. I've got a pile of them now, and my friends covet being able to pick one for themselves. There's one for every kitchen and style!

Uuch, yeah, I just went and looked at the chart. Seems pretty challenging to find the rhythm. That's part of why I set it aside initially; it looked kinda chaotic? Props to you making it through the whole thing. I guess the upside is that it is nearly impossible to see if you made a mistaken cross somewhere, lol.

Oh wow, this is a neat one. I noticed this pattern when it came out, but didn't really pay it much attention at the time. Looking at your sock, and rechecking the pattern, it looks like all the twisted stitches do a decent job of breaking up the colour in a short-segment variegated yarn. That's pretty groovy.

And I love that colour combo; reminds me of the beach. Your recipient was lucky, hope they enjoyed 'em!

One of my absolute favourites of all time is Sprouting. Such a nice fit, cables aren't very stressful but are enough to not be boring, works with solid to moderately variegated yarns.

Another one I come back to, since I have a proclivity for neon-technocolour-short-dye-repeat yarns, is Crusoe. It seems to have the magical ability to tame even the most stubborn pooling and highlight all the pretty colours in a skein that has all the pretty colours, if you know what I mean.

The Wire has such great characters. I'm not even a cop show person, and it was just so fun to watch.