The smell of smoke

Happy x-mas sales shopping everybody! Christmas was nice and I survived the long days of work leading up to the holiday. At the sales I've only bought myself some yarn and knitting needles and I've started on a new pair of leg warmers. It's been years since I last knitted, and then I didn't really knit anything more complicated than...leg warmers. But you gotta start somewhere, right?

Knitting seems like an nice and stay-warm-under-a-blanket hobby, unlike sewing where you got to get partly undressed every time you're trying your item on, and right now I want to stay warm because out flat is feeling very cold at the moment. For a very interesting reason;

A week ago Mr. Kitten and I went to bed around half past ten in the evening. Roughly an hour later we woke up to the very sureal sound of the fire alarm in the stairway outside our flat door. We could smell something burning, so I grabbed some clothes and my phone and we went outside to see what was going on. There was fire engine outside the house and other residents in pyjamas and wintercoats. We couldn't see any flames or smoke, but were told that there was a fire in the storgage department of our basement, almost directly under our flat...

More fire trucks arrived and hoses were dragged across the snowy lawn and smoke-divers were making their way down into the basement. Around this time the basement window broke or was broken and smoke started pouring out, lot's of it. At this point I was wondering if I should have tried to rescue my computer and camera and thinking things like will all my clothes get damaged from smoke and so on. But, after about an hour the fire was put out and our flat was safe, but too smokey for us to be allowed back in. Finally, at half past one we got to go back into our flats where we did our best to air out the smell of smoke and get some sleep. What a night!


The stairway still smells of smoke, but luckily our flat stayed pretty smoke free so the smell is very faint in here. The fire broke out directly under the flat wall-to-wall to ours, and something must have been damaged as the heating isn't working in the room closest...And in every other room it's freezing as well. Everything in out storage cage is covered in soot and the plastic covering our garden chair cusions has melted. We had mostly camping and skiing equipment in this storage, some of it still needs to be checked for damages...But we are safe.

I wish you a very safe and happy new year! (Don't forget to get home-insurance and fire alarms if you haven't got any!) My new year's eve will be spent and my cousins wedding. See you in 2010!