Preserving the harvest

 

The weather this August has been cool, wet and very grey.  Many people are saying how many plants in their gardens are slow to ripen.  My tomatoes are definitely on a slow pace to ripen.  So slow that I worry they may not ripen at all this year.   There were no Amish Paste Tomato plants in the garden centres this year, so I had to settle with the only Roma style tomato plant that I could find which was San Marzano which has a longer time to ripen.  Next year I may break down and start my own tomato plants, to get the ones I know will work in my garden and climate.

Because all the tomatoes are still green, I ended up buying 1/2 bushel of tomatoes at the market.   There were few to choose from because even the farmers are having issues with slow ripening this year. They were still not quite ripe enough, but luckily I was away all day after purchasing them.   I ducked out of the house until the evening on Saturday so when I started canning on Sunday, they were just starting to be perfect.   I got over half of them done, in 2 canning pot batches, and a third on Sunday finished them off.   I have 20 pint/500 ml jars in the pantry.  My hot water bath canner will do 7, 500 ml jars at a time.  If I can get at least two more batches done, there should be enough for the winter.  

The blackberries are also ripening this year.   The past few years  I haven't had enough berries to harvest, but this year the patch has finally matured enough.  They are late though and with the weather, I'm only able to harvest every 2 or 3 days.  However I already have 785 g of berries and there are still many more unripe berries on the brambles.   I'm washing them and tossing them in the freezer.  My plans are that when or if I get enough berries, I will let them thaw and push them through a sieve to remove the seeds.  Then I'll make seedless blackberry jam.  With the batch of apricot jam I made earlier, while not having a great variety, there will be more than enough jam and 2 of my favourite kinds.

Sewing tricks and csm grafting socks

 I sent in my volunteer availability to Westfield for the next couple of months, and got my building assignment already.   Since I'm in the Misener house, which means a great woodstove for cooking and baking, I decided to make myself a new work dress.   I've several dress lengths of 1860's prints from when a local store had put them all on clearance.  I got a couple of them on sale for buy 1 yard, get 2 free, and they were already reduced to begin with.

Anyway, I chose the blue one, not because it was my favourite print, but because I looked in the bag and I already had purchased the thread and notions.  That was a no brainer.  

I was trying to find my pattern, which already fits.  I obviously put it in that pit of despair known as a "safe place", and not my pattern file, so I'm redrafting a pattern.   Last week was a write off for getting anything worthwhile done, but today I picked it back up.  I was only able to get a fit that I liked by using an amscye dart, which I've not seen on any photos of that period of garment.   A bit of searching though, came up with instructions on swinging the dart to  a waist dart.   I wasn't sure about doing this, but I bravely cut the first dart and although I had to make it a tad longer, it worked a treat and the muslin now lies flat.   I'm hoping that it fits as nicely.

This is a toe that I just grafted closed with a kitchener stitch.   It's a lot more grafting with a cranked sock than with a hand knit sock.  In this case, 36 stitches on each side to graft together.    I'm not that fond of grafting but it's easier on the cranked socks because you have to do it from the back.   The stitches are held in place by waste yarn rather than needles, and there is no need to make sure you're picking them up on the correct side like pearling or stockinette side.   You do them from the backside and it's just stitching through the previous stitch and the new stitch, previous stitch and the new stitch, until you're one.

The downside is that there are things to get in your way.   If there isn't enough contrast with your waste yarn, you can't see the stitches to pick up.  If you don't have enough light, it's also difficult to see those stitches.  Plus, you have to be careful not to pick up the waste yarn when you're grafting the live stitches.   On the upside, it's pretty easy to do and I found it easy to get the tension pretty close so it's difficult to see where you've grafted.

Another downside is that it sort of looks like a hungry worm monster which wants to eat your arm when you don't get it stitched up quickly enough.   Once the seam is closed, I'll just pull out all the white waste yarn and the sock will be done!  Otherwise, that partially grafted sock could be inspiration for nightmares!

And Then There Were Two

 Last week on Thursday, hubby asked me if our kitty Phil was okay and I said I thought so but would check. On Friday, I thought that something might be wrong. On Saturday we realized he wasn't eating his kibble, so we gave him extra gushy food.  We even got him some special food just for him. We thought maybe he had a bad tooth or something.   Then on Sunday we noticed one pupil was larger than the other, that there was now a lump on his neck or under his chin and his breathing was odd.   We got him to the vet on Monday, in the only emergency time slot that was available.  Monday afternoon we brought him home to bury him. 

We were totally stunned and hadn't expected to lose Phil at all because a few days ago, he was his normal self.  An xray showed his lungs were full of fluid, so much that there was barely any clear area and it had pushed his esophagus along his spine.  The vet said that the pupil size differences suggested that this was an incurable virus that he'd picked up as a kitten and that there was no cure, at least that is available here.    We had to make the difficult decision right then.   We really weren't prepared for this and had no expectations that we wouldn't be bringing Phil home.

Phil was my lap cat.   He slept on my legs almost every night.  Many days he demanded that I let him nap on top of me in the afternoons, which lead to a lot of novels being read, with a cat snuggled on me. In the winter he would crawl under the covers at night.  He'd figured out that if he wiggled his head up near the pillow, so that his head wasn't under the blankets, he could sleep there for hours or all night. 

He chose us as a home.   One summer we kept seeing an orange cat around the property for a few weeks. 

Supervisor Phil asleep on the job

Then one morning I was outside and he came up to me on the deck, crying and meowing.  I didn't know what to do, but I brought him some food and water, as he was so very skinny.   The next morning he showed up with his brother.  After a couple of scary incidents with predators, the two boys became house cats.  

They were both sweeties and didn't act like feral cats.  We thought they may have been drop offs, which sometimes happens in rural areas.   They were both well socialized and accustomed to people.   They fit into our family perfectly.  Phil was such a character that he was best friend to all of his chosen people and shared his affection freely.   He was a helper kitty, curious and liked to supervise everything.  I will miss him thinking that every skein of yarn was his to play with.  I will miss his cuddles, his charm and his personality.  This loss will be difficult to get over as it just hit us without any notice or time to prepare. 

RIP Phil, and safe trip over the rainbow bridge.

More socks, and odd things happening

We don't have a bush lot, so we buy our wood in logs from a local tree service, in dump truck loads.  What type of wood we get and when we get it, depends a lot on where he is cutting and for whom.   We've been getting a lot of maple this year in smaller sizes, which slices and dices so quickly.    Last week he dropped off a load, but one long, skinny log got caught under the dump truck tailgate.  It unlatched half of it, and while trying to hook it back on, it dropped on the other side, and crashed to the ground.  Unfortunately, he couldn't pick it up until the next afternoon, so it sat in the middle of our driveway looking quite sad.   I got photos but I didn't run outside to do so, as I didn't want to get in the way, or make the driver feel badly.

Sock that wouldn't fit anyone!

I've been making socks, or trying to.   If you don't want to practice and practice some more, this is not the
fibre art you want to try.   The learning curve is huge, but if you practice, watch videos, read and have someone to either help you out or answer your questions, it's not insurmountable.   I'm having successes now.  I went to a "crank in" on the weekend.  That's a gathering of people who haul 50 plus lbs of cast iron and aluminum bits and pieces, plus some yarn, and crank socks together, while socializing.   It makes for a fun day, but very little productivity, because counting and chatting doesn't work for me.  Not having a physical counter on my Legare, I have to count in my head, and as soon as I drift off to a conversation, I lose my count.    At the end of the day, I made one sock which wouldn't fit anyone in my family.  I also forgot to write down the various numbers of rows for each step, so I wouldn't be able to make a second one.   The whole event was very good for me in that I learned a couple of things, but moreso, I realized that even experienced crankers are making the same mistakes that I am making.  Plus I had a lovely compliment from the gal who sat next to me, who hadn't realized that I was a "newbie".

I went with a friend who is the mentor who is answering my many, many questions.  I'd asked her about cast on bonnets with metal rings.  She gave me some rings, plus teeny tiny stitch markers  to try.  I made a cast on bonnet with the rings yesterday.   It's different, and when it works, it was really easy to use.  A bit faster than a traditional one, in that I didn't need to fish out the little bit of yarn and manually hook it on a needle.  However, it was pretty easy to get a ring hooked on a needle without yarn, which causes a jam.  I'll try it a few more times before I make a judgement.   I've realized though that having a few extra cast on bonnets is a good thing.

I tried out the new cast on bonnet last night, making a tube at various tensions to test gauge of this yarn.   Today I did the math and made this mock rib sock.   It should actually fit someone!   Once I make it's mate (yes, I did write down the pattern this time), I'll have to learn how to graft the toes together.   It's a bit different from doing it on hand knit socks.    That being said, I've also been told that I start to knit my socks from the wrong side, probably because of that hand knitting.   I don't think it really matters in the end, as long as I can translate any written patterns I might use.

chipmunk for cuteness factor