Yes, We Have No Tomatoes

Good morning, my friends. The great tomato extravacanza has come to an end. Since I did no canning last year, the empty jars have been stacking up to an alarming height. It was good to put some of them back to work. When all was finished, there were 10-1/2 quarts of tomato sauce and 7 pints of salsa. That should hold us for a while.

While I was waiting for those last jars to process, I was able to finish up the stitching on the Sashiko piece. Here's your peek. Any guesses?

Now I need to decide how to finish it off. I've trimmed it close to the stitching. Probably I'll use the solid gray below for a stop border. After that, I'm not exactly sure what to do next. I'll use one of the two blues on the left for an outer border. The gray batik on the right could be a back or a binding. 

I'm still mulling it over. 

Knowing I had nothing to stitch this morning, I traced June's block for A Year in the Garden.

These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far:

There was time to start on the stitching while we watched the news last night.

I'll pick it up there this morning. Also on today's agenda...plenty of R&R...but there are still some things I need to do. For one thing, I want to get back to my Bowflex workouts. I've returned once since we got back from our trip. Today I'll increase the resistance a little bit. My first attempt was ridiculously easy, but no achy joints afterward. I'll continue to increase the resistance conservatively. Also, there are a couple of easy housekeeping chores to finish today. 

Mainly, I want to get busy making the ninth block for the Merry, Merry Snowmen. 

It'll be good to move this project along to the "Quilt Tops to Finish" list. 

So that's a full day, but I'm going to take plenty of time to relax. Our weather has cooled off significantly, and we're expecting quite a bit of rain this week. I want to weed the herb garden again, but I'll probably hold off for that soft, wet soil next week. Fall weather is approaching, my friends. I'm looking forward to it. 

Halfway

Good morning, my friends. There's not much to tell you today. I spent a good part of the day in tomato purgatory. By the time I was finished, I had five quarts of pasta sauce and 3 pints of salsa. There are also partial jars of each stashed in the refrigerator. I'll fill those today.

My friend, Karen, asked what I put in my pasta sauce "for taste." It's a recipe I've been using for as long as I've been making pasta sauce. The recipe I've been using is for Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce, from this  book:

I always double the recipe. And after many years of making this sauce, I started roasting the tomatoes before turning them into sauce. It's much faster than the usual method of scoring, blanching, and skinning. You can see how that works at this post right here.

As for the salsa, I'm using this recipe from this book:

It was mid-afternoon when I finished for the day. There was time for sewing, but I really just wanted to sit down and put my feet up. I was already tired anticipating today's efforts. Knowing I'll be finished by the end of today gives me a little infusion of energy, but I'm not ready to start on that yet.

Dinner was easy last night. Mike grilled a chicken breast, and we had a chicken Caesar salad. Sadie kept an eye on us from her geriatric kitty pole. (She's not the geriatric. Smitty is. She wanted you to know that.)

Smitty was enjoying the evening from the comfort of his catio.

Even though I didn't make it to the sewing room, I spent some extra time on the Sashiko piece. It's very nearly finished. As I've been working on it, I've realized I want to add a little something at the bottom. When I finish today's stitching, I'll trace a few more lines as a guide for the remainder. Here's your peek.

Okay, so today will look a lot like yesterday. I'll get back to work making more sauce and salsa, and I'll use up the last of the tomatoes. Possibly I'll be more energetic today when I've finished them off. For now, it's time for some breakfast and slow-stitching. And then, my friends, tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. 

Tackling Tomatoes Today

Good morning, my friends. It's the day I celebrate and dread all at the same time. Yesterday I picked up 40 lbs. of tomatoes from our CSA farmers. Wanna see what 40 lbs. of tomatoes looks like?

Beautiful, aren't they? We're down to our last jar of pasta sauce, and the last jar of salsa is open in the refrigerator. And not to brag, but I think homemade pasta sauce and homemade salsa taste better than anything available in the grocery store. And so...it's a big job. So far, I'm willing and able to do it. 

I didn't do any canning last year. We haven't had a garden for the past two summers, and I still had enough of everything to get us through the year. So that means I've had a two-year break from canning. Still...what a lot of work. I'm dragging my feet this morning at the thought getting started. Thankfully, our farmers left me a gift watermelon at the pick-up site. That was a nice surprise!

Before heading out yesterday morning, I spent some time on my Sashiko piece. The hand-stitching is very close to being finished now. When I left home, Sadie was snuggled up in her quilt. It's been a while since it's been cool enough for this.

When I got home, I sorted and washed jars and lids. Everything is ready to go for today and tomorrow. There was still time left in the day for a little sewing. My goal was to sew The Sewing Room blocks into a little banner for my sewing room. I first sashed them together in a column.

Then I added a stop border all around.

Then I added side borders, and checked to see if it would fit in its future home. It does. Barely.

And then I added top and bottom borders. I decided to make them a little wider to show off that fabric some more. I might decide to trim a little from each one. I'll give my eyes some time to get used to looking at it before I do any cutting.

It ends up at 12 x 47 inches. I used that same solid lavender to cut binding strips.

I'd selected a couple of different fabrics as potential backs. There was just a little left of the floral...not enough to do much else...and so I decided to use that for the back. Now, I have just a few scraps left.

Now I've listed it under the "Small Quilts for Quilting" heading. It won't have to wait long for its turn. There is one other small quilt ahead of it. I'll use this length of purple ribbon to make a banner-style hanger for it.

So my day will be pretty well filled by tomato tonnage. If there's time for sewing, I'll return to my list of WIPs. 

Next up will be to make the ninth of nine blocks for the Merry, Merry Snowmen. Here's what I have so far:

This is the block I'll be making.

Before I do anything else today, I'll spend a little time on my slow-stitching. And then...tomatoes. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. The next two days will be taken up by tomatoes. Wish me luck, my friends. I'm going in.

Can-Do

Good morning, my friends, although I'm almost too late to say "good morning." We were up and out early to do some running around. Mike and I left in separate cars, but met up at the McDonald's in town for our beloved Egg McMuffins. Then, he had a doctor's appointment (nothing serious), and I did a short grocery shopping trip to pick up the items I'd need for pasta sauce. After that, I headed to the farmers' to pick up 40 lbs. of beautiful Roma tomatoes. You're going to make a lovely pasta sauce, my darlings.

So, I have everything I need, but I won't start on that until Monday. Erik and Mae are coming for dinner on Sunday, and I really don't want to get started on this until there's nothing else on the horizon. It's a big job over several days. The weekend will give me some time to steel myself for all the slicing, roasting, peeling, chopping, mixing, simmering, ladling, canning, and boiling. (Repeat as necessary.)

There was some canning activity yesterday. Finally, I accumulated enough cucumbers to make a half batch of dill pickles. 

It was mostly a matter of washing and trimming, and then filling the jars with brine. Then into the boiling water bath for 15 minutes. My yield was 6 pints.

Frankly, a half batch is enough for us, and so I've permanently halved the recipe I'm working from. I've adapted the recipe by adding one arbol chile pod to my jars. It's mainly for color and appearance, but I like a spicy pickle too.

When that was done, I had a couple of household chores to do, but then went to work in the sewing room. I needed to make two blue flowers like the one below. The one shown had to be constructed on a teflon pressing sheet.

When it was finished, I peeled it off the teflon sheet...

And then fused it to the larger block. After taking that picture, I realized I needed to peel it back from the edge a little to make way for a seam allowance when all the blocks are sewn together.

And then that block was ready for top-stitching.

Before I quit for the day yesterday, I'd done all the green stems and leaves.

I left one of the blocks needle down in preparation for all the red stitching.

Also, in yesterday's wanderings I decided on my "Quilter's Choice" project. I'm going to sew this panel into a quilt. This is called "Almost Amish," from RJR Fabrics. I purchased it on a wonderful day of quilt shop touring with my friend Robin in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

After giving it some thought, I'm thinking I'm going to cut the blocks apart and, using all solids, sash them and create mini quilt blocks for cornerstones. I haven't really checked into the desirability/advisability of that, but I'll get it figured out today. Also, looking at this picture, I've realized some of the blocks are duplicates. Hm. Maybe instead of mini quilt blocks, I'll make some traditional blocks to intersperse among the printed fabric blocks. Obviously, my ideas for this aren't fully baked yet.

Okay, so I'm getting a later start with the morning's running around, but it had to be done. Just before sitting down here, I let Smitty in the back door. Looks like he's been digging for gophers. I'd love it if he'd catch the one that did so much damage in my vegetable garden.

Go get 'em, Smitty. 

My slow-stitching has been on the back burner this morning. I believe I'll head there next. We're heating up here for the weekend, and we had some lightning and thunder last night. There's supposed to be more headed our way, and so we're keeping our fingers crossed for no wildfires. 

All righty, then. Off I go. Enjoy your afternoons. Get lots of sewing done.

More Planning

Good morning, my friends. It's a new week. Are you feeling refreshed? We had a quiet but busy week last week. We were both feeling a little rickety last night. Aside from the usual household chores and sewing, I pulled a bucket of weeds. That means lots of sitting down and getting up again, which is at least as tiring as the task itself. Mike kindly installed drip irrigation for the dahlias and the hanging petunia baskets. It occurred to me that someone would need to be around to water the dahlias when we leave on our September trip. Mike decided to plumb some drip irrigation from inside the greenhouse to the dahlia pots on the outside wall. Great idea! I'm telling you this because his day involved a lot of sitting down and getting up again too. We were tired pups by day's end.

Before getting down and dirty (literally) with the weeds, I took a little walk around. The Firefighter dahlia was my first stop. It was still just halfway opened.

When I checked it again at the end of the day, it still looked just the same. It seems to be a shy guy. Across the yard, the hydrangeas caught my eye.

Back inside, I got a head start on dinner, and then I finished tracing all the "book spines" for the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt. This will be a good take-along project. It uses only one color of floss. "Pack light" are watchwords for trips in the truck camper, and this project will take up almost no space at all.

Then, I turned my attention to this problem child. I wanted to experiment with that blue ink to see truly how colorfast it was.

So I cut a couple of the words from the line of instructions at the bottom. The one on the right was pressed with a hot iron. The one on the left was left as is.

Then, I took them and wetted them both down, using hand soap to try to scrub away that blue ink. As you can see, even the piece that was not ironed didn't wash out very well. I'm going to say that ink is permanent no matter what you do. So then, I was curious to see how well three strands of embroidery floss would cover...and, not so well.

I tried it again on one of the cross-stitch sections. Clearly, I'm going to have to be very precise with my stitching. 

Oh well. I'm still satisfied that it will be worth the effort to stitch it. Possibly washing it properly in the washing machine will make the difference. In any case, I decided not to iron the pieces. Instead, I cut them apart. Then, I laid some freezer paper on my ironing board for protection. Then, I cut muslin backing pieces, sprayed them with spray baste, and then just smoothed them with my hands. The crease in the one below is less obvious in person. I think that's more of a shadow you're seeing than an actual crease.

And then I just kept going until all 12 were complete. I still need to get the embroidery floss to go with this, but then it will be ready for traveling. Ordinarily, I'd pick from my leftover floss stash, but I don't want to run out on the road. It makes more sense to start with the full skeins suggested on the pattern.

Those two projects should keep me busy for the entirety of our trip. I really hate it when I run out of stitching.

Okay, and then I went to work on my art quilt piece. I'll be using this fabric. Sorry. Just a peek since the fabric could give it away.

After some cutting and arranging, I had it laid out for sewing.

And here's a peek at the detail. I know. I'm so mean.

There was more to do, but I ran out of time. I went outside to see what Mike was up to. Sadie was cooling her tummy furs on the patio.

One of our nearer neighbors was firing off some kind of gun for target practice. It's one of the banes of our rural existence. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, there's nothing we can do except hope they'll stop soon. This went on for around an hour...right at dinner time...on a Sunday afternoon. Sheesh. The kitties were beyond offended. Kitties are quiet people. 

For last night's zucchini battle, I made this Burst Tomato Galette with Corn and Zucchini. It's a little like a veggie pizza. It takes some time to make it, but it isn't difficult. I've taken to making my crusts in the food processor, and this one was easy to work with.

We had it with some of the garden green beans. This is a delicious way to prepare green beans. The recipe for Charred Green Beans was one we gained when we were doing the Cooking Light Diet. I made one little change to the recipe, and I've linked to my version back there. It was a good dinner. 

Mike liked it enough to have seconds, and there's still enough for another meal.

Smitty has taken to waiting for me on the stairs at dinner time. My routine is to finish with dinner. Mike cleans up. While he's cleaning up, I head upstairs to get into my jammies. Smitty has claimed this as his purrsonal petting time, and he has included it as a part of his daily routine.

We have about ten minutes of cuddle time to finish out the day. A guy's gotta get his lovin' in, you know.

Okay, so I have a day on my feet ahead. I need to pickle and can those carrots I picked up at the farmer's market last week. I'll save the beets and do those in a few days. Also, the tomatoes are coming on fast and furious now. I expect I'll have enough for salsa before the week is out. Obviously, canning season is in full swing. 

A few weeks ago, I checked in with our CSA farmers. We don't get CSA shares any more, but I still hit them up for tomato tonnage at the end of each season. I sent them a short email telling them I was hoping for some tomatoes this year. Yesterday I received their response. They now have an 8-week old baby! Well. Doncha know I have to put a baby quilt on my list of to-do's now. I spent some time searching for a pattern I liked last night. I wanted something I could put together quickly. It would be nice to drop it off with them when I pick up my tomatoes. So, I settled on this freebie from American Quilter's Society. It's called Sweet Dreams. Here's the picture:

I don't know if they had a boy or a girl, and so I'll keep it gender neutral. I'm sure I can come up with some fun fabrics for this. I still have some of the vegetable fabric I used in the Bunny Patch baby quilt. It would be fun to incorporate a "farm" fabric.

And the newest Tiny House block has been released. This one looks kind of fun. I love a good lighthouse.

Okay, so there's plenty to do to get my week off to a busy start. Time to put on my shoes and get moving. After so much sitting down and getting up from yesterday, a day of standing is sounding pretty good. I just hope my feet agree with me.