Ready for the Big One

All I can say is this: If the Cascadia Subduction Zone decides to do its worst, it's good to know that we'll have pasta sauce for an army. Yesterday's day-long task was to finish up the last of the tomatoes. There were enough left for another double batch of pasta sauce and one batch of salsa. That gave me a total of 18 quarts of pasta sauce and 11 pints of salsa. Not bad for three days' work...I guess...it's hard to say. Surely it will be worth it when we're eating that bright fresh tomato-flavored sauce in the long cold dark days of winter. 

Here's how it looks on my pantry shelf. There's enough for us and plenty to share with the kids. And I'll just say that sharing with the kids is worth the work right there.

While the last of the salsa was processing yesterday, I made another batch of Mike's favorite refrigerator pickles too. No processing for them, other than putting them into the refrigerator.

I had in mind to do those from day one, but the all-encompassing work of processing multiple batches of sauce really took me by surprise. It's the largest pile of tomatoes I've ever processed at one time, and I was naive about the level of effort involved. It kept both hands busy for many, many hours. Nevertheless, when you see all these beautiful jars of canned goods on your pantry shelves, it is very gratifying. The pints of salsa are there in the middle.

On the left are jars of tomato jam and tomato chutney. Next to those are various flavors of fruit chutney from last year. Then the salsa and the dilled carrot spears I did earlier. The salsa verde is hiding behind those. Then to the far right are this year's jars of zucchini bread & butter pickles and some zucchini relish from last year. 

Someone asked me what was next, and I was kind of stuck for an answer. We'll have more tomatoes coming on our own plants, and I think I'm just going to dice them up and can them as plain tomatoes for soups and sauces. That won't happen for a week or two, however. 

So, here I am with my hands free. I was awake at 3:00 a.m., and I'm not kidding when I say I've been peeling, seeding, and chopping tomatoes in my sleep. Since I couldn't get back to sleep, I was up at 4:15 a.m. doing needle work. As long as I'm awake, I might as well be doing something. I read my email and checked in on my Facebook friends. When Mike left for work, I fell over on the couch and slept for another hour or so. 

Today is a CSA pick-up day, but aside from that it's NBS (Nothing But Sewing). It's the first chance I've had to attach the 97D foot to Big Bertha. As you can see, the quarter-inch measurement is spot on now. The left side of the foot is a little wider than the previous foot. This is so that it covers the feed dogs on that side. Apparently that was causing a problem with the fabric pulling, although I hadn't experienced that myself.

While I'm giving myself an NBS day, there are a few other things I want to do. For one thing, I've been Jonesing to make an apple pie for two. That was another thing I was thinking I could squeeze in while processing the tomatoes. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I'll get at that in a little while. What I wanted to do most this morning was make some more leaves for the Blushing Aspens table runner. The next one on the lightbox was this one (remember that I'm working in reverse). It has an extra seam on the left.

I wondered why that was necessary, and so I took a look at Frieda Anderson's creation in the book. You can see that she turned her fabric 90 degrees there. She's working with a gradient fabric, and it seemed like my print wasn't going to make much sense beyond giving me an extra seam.

When you look at the picture of the finished table runner, you can see that there are green pieces in the split leaves.

I decided to try putting the green there, just for grins. I can always change it later if I don't like it. So I made the second leaf, and then sewed the two leaves together. Here's how it's looking. I've included the layout from the book so that you can see what I've done.

There are a few little "filler pieces" scattered throughout the piece, and I'll use green in all of those. 

And that's my morning so far. Time to get back to the sewing machine and the pie. My feet are going to thank me for an easier time of it today.