Canning and Slow Stitching

Two days in a row with no sewing, and the kitties can hardly believe their eyes. What is this world coming to? Sadie settled herself on the Wine Country quilt to contemplate what it might be like to take up drinking.

Smitty already has the market on catnip cornered, and so she thinks wine might be her only refuge from no-sewing days.

As for Smitty, he keeps parking himself in front of the glass door, hoping it will open again for him some day. He hasn't had a good gopher in weeks.

On the other hand, we did have some excitement yesterday. Smitty was out on his catio, minding his own business when, out of the blue, he came flying in through the kitty door, hair on his back standing on edge, back arched, tail up, eyes wide. So, I wondered what he’d seen, and I stepped outside to see a small bobcat heading off down into the woods. He was just a little guy. Even Smitty might have been bigger. The bobcat was no more than 10 feet from the catio. Smitty was completely safe, but I’ve never seen a bobcat come that close to the house. I suspect he was curious at seeing Smitty sitting there.

Smitty's reaction was priceless. I didn't get a picture yesterday, but here's one I took on a previous bobcat sighting:

If that isn't a "Holy Sh*t!" look, then I don't know what is. So all's well again, although he ran upstairs and stayed there for hours yesterday morning. I'm actually kind of surprised he was so freaked out, but then, I didn't see exactly what happened.

Okay, so while all of that was going on, I was starting on Tree #6. I had all of the trunk and branches finished when I quit for the morning. It was first chain stitched in variegated brown, and then the whole chain was whipped stitched in a light green.

After that, I got busy with my canning. As expected, my yield on the pickled beets was low...just 3 pints. Don't think I'll be sharing any of these with the kids, unfortunately. Maybe I'll get some more beets at the grocery store and do a few more. They're pretty easy. These are about half CSA beets and half grocery store beets.

The beets are pretty easy. You must first cook them and skin them. You can boil them, but I prefer roasting. Then they're packed into jars along with whole cloves, allspice berries, cinnamon sticks, and some pickling salt. Pour over the brine and process in a boiling water bath. Honestly, once the beets are cooked, the rest goes pretty fast. I'm using a recipe from a book entitled, Small Batch Canning, and you can find it right here.

That was followed pretty quickly by 10 half pints of Cranberry Orange Chutney. There are only eight pictured here, which is the maximum number of jars my canner will hold. Since I knew I was going to open some for Thanksgiving and beyond, I refrigerated the two extra jars. This is another easy recipe, and takes just about a half hour to cook. It's really good on turkey sandwiches, and also makes a good spread on crackers with cream cheese. The recipe is from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and you can find it right here.

And that's a wrap for Canning Season 2019. I'm not completely ruling out the possibility of doing more pickled beets...or something else if I see an irresistible recipe...but I hope I'm finished for the year. This is a list of all the canning I've done this year. I keep a list on my phone so I can tally it up and feel accomplished, but it also makes a good reference for subsequent years.

After that, I did some housework. We had leftovers for dinner, and it was nice not to have to do any more cooking for the day. While the leftovers were heating up, I finished off Tree #6. I'm telling you these are addicting. 

If you're wondering about the two blurry smudges in that image above, it's where I tried to edit out some Sadie hairs. She's my stitching cat, and I end up with her furs all over my stitcheries. I must remember to use my lint roller before taking pictures.

Here are the six I have so far.

This morning I read on Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread blog that she is coming out with a similar series of snowflakes. You can see some examples at her post right here. She says it will be available in the next "few weeks," and you can count on me to be first in line when they come out. The trees have been so much fun. The snowflakes should be fun too.

But snowflakes aside, now I've traced out the next tree. With such fine lines, they're harder to trace than they are to stitch. I'm thinking this project might benefit from the use of some Sticky Fabri-Solvy, but it's too late now. This one is done in a stitch I've never even seen before.

Her ebook for the trees contains excellent instructions and images that describe the stitches beautifully. This stitch, however, was left out. It's called a braid stitch. Fortunately, she's done a nice little video, and I suspect that's why it was left out of the book. You can see it right here. It's probably easier to show and tell rather than to explain in writing.

Okay...so...gulp. I'm heading off to work on that right now. Wish me luck.