An update on our home

Dear friends,

This is an update on our situation, a little over a week later. For those who hadn’t heard, our home burned down at 2:30 AM on Sunday, May 31. The building was an 8-unit condo with about 20 residents; all made it out OK. The 3-alarm fire devastated the interior of the building; however, our unit is one of two on the “garden level” (i.e. the basement) where the damage is much more water and smoke and toxic debris than actual fire. However, the city deemed the building structurally unsound and we have not been allowed into the unit to see if anything can be retrieved. We still do not have a final report on how the fire started.

The demolition was supposed to happen relatively quickly, but delays from Eversource have kept the city from issuing the permit we need to proceed with that. Because of that, our unit has continued to languish in the summer heat and the moisture remaining from 5+ hours of high-pressure water, which means we are likely going to have a severe mold problem in addition to everything else.

We still hold out hope that some of our most important and irreplaceable items can be retrieved and possibly restored, but we won’t know until the demolition can begin. Eversource’s delay may yet cost us another couple of weeks without the closure we so sorely need.

To everyone who has already offered help, thank you so much. We feel lucky to have you in our lives. Your generosity adds light and hope to our lives every day, even when we don’t always respond immediately. Our Quaker community has been incredibly generous in helping us with temporary housing as we regroup. We have also had many offers of help from family, friends, and coworkers. Local people have offered furniture, clothes, food and sundries; knitters and yarn companies have offered to help replace yarn and reknit some of my samples; others have offered financial support and encouraged us to open a GoFundMe.

We have been reluctant to ask for any of those things because, as I mentioned, we don’t yet know what can be salvaged. We cannot accommodate a lot of material donations in our small apartment, and we have a very good insurance plan which should cover a large amount of the lost property — and will help us with rent until our condo is rebuilt. We’re doing (financially) OK — but we have one neighbor who is not. She’s a Haitian immigrant with a teenage son, who also lost everything and has no insurance. She’s living with family but her son has to live in a different town. Before we ask for any help for ourselves, we want to make sure she is OK and has the resources to rebuild her life with her son. To that end, we will likely be setting up a small fund to help her get back on her feet. Stay tuned for that.

To our local friends, thank you for the help offered so far. When the demolition happens, we will likely need hands and vehicles to cart stuff to a storage unit nearby. Aside from that, stay tuned.

To my knitting friends, students and followers, I am still optimistic that some of my stash and samples may survive this. Most of it (aside from WIPs) were in ziploc bags inside watertight bins, as a moth deterrent — the water should also have been deterred. If it turns out that this is not the case, I will begin a list of yarns and projects I will need replaced. If you are up to the challenge of sample knitting for me, you can join my test and sample knitters mailing list. If you just want to support my creative pursuits in double-knitting, please feel free to buy a pattern on Ravelry. For those who have found backdoor links to my online store (which I have tried to keep hidden until I am able to fulfill orders again), I have a limited supply of books and patterns at Wall of Yarn in IL; they are drop-shipping them for me during this time. Due to this limitation, I cannot currently sign books for you. As soon as the way opens, I will try to start running my virtual workshops again.

To our Quaker community, please hold us in the Light. We greatly appreciate the material and spiritual support you have offered and given, and I hope to be able to continue supporting the Meeting in all the ways I have thus far, and more.

To everyone who has made it this far, thank you for your care and support. We will make it through this. The world is burning, and we are but a small part of it. Our problems, large as they seem to us right now, pale in comparison to the systemic racism and violence our country visits on its most vulnerable citizens and residents, and the continuing ravages of the pandemic here and worldwide. Please know that we are marching beside you in spirit, even as our bodies and minds are exhausted from this ordeal. We hope to join you soon. We love you all.

Alasdair & Marcus