More Crazy Storm Damage

A huge, weird weather system came through the whole area the other day.  The nation wide severe storm and tornado warning system was going off for well over an hour.  We had wild winds, heavy driving rains in heavy cloud cover that had the outside solar lights on in the daytime because it was so dark.  When it was all over and done, there were branches down every where.   We were lucky that we still had hydro, but a lot of areas even nearby had none for hours.   Once again, the storm took out my clothes line.   The clean up of the yard yielded 6 trailer loads of branches, limbs and other tree debris.  The clumps of leaves, just got mowed into mulch.  The worst thing though, was that other half of the tree that fell on my garden in early July, came down, taking a pine tree with it, and it landed - yup, on my garden!   The wire tomato cage and the spiral support are visible, but crushed and one tomato showing on the right side.

It mainly fell on the large Mortgage Lifter tomatoes in the raised beds.  One was just lightly hit, and mainly with smaller limbs separate from the main trunk, so it was fairly easy to clean up.   I ended up picking some of the very low fruit that was still green, because one of them had bite marks in it.   I felt it was better to save the rest of those tomatoes, than feed whatever was making them dinner.   The other plant though was completely covered by the tree.   Hubby trimmed enough away so that I could pick all the still green tomatoes from the plant and bring them inside to ripen.

I was amazed at how quickly the rescued green tomatoes ripened inside.   Mostly ripened, as when I realized that I had to either can them or use them up today, because they were ripening and quite soft, I found a couple of them were not quite ripe inside yet.  I peeled and chopped them up.  Mortgage Lifter tomatoes are a heritage breed which results in huge tomatoes, with lots of flesh bits.  They're great on sandwiches.  I heated them to a boil in a large pot so I could water bath can the batch.  If you heat the jars, and heat the tomatoes, you can put them into a canner filled with near boiling water without risking thermal shock.  I also find that heating the tomatoes allow me to put more fruit into the jars.  

I also used a fair number of the fancy Black Cherry Tomatoes, which are actually greenish brown and green inside. (This is the important information) They are a nice size cherry tomato, albeit ugly.  There are lots still on the vines.  There were too many to eat and I didn't want them to go bad.   A few seconds in a hot water bath and the skins slipped off nicely.  I mixed them into the chopped tomatoes and I thought nothing of it, until I pulled the 7 jars from the canner.   Because the huge tomatoes were chopped, the tomatoes separated, with the meaty part floating over the clear tomato juice.   It's apparently a pectin issue which is released or broken down when chopped too much.   One jar had to wildly green liquid on the bottom and a very green flesh.  I will admit to commenting on the weird effect of the little brown cherry tomatoes.   Then hubby, who remember pulled down the jars for me, reminded me that one of the jars I used was a fancy green glass one.   So I actually think they are all normal and I was just doing the canning by rote and didn't even pay attention to the colour of the jar.  How did I really not notice that?   However, I'm happy that all jars sealed nicely and tomorrow afternoon, I'll be able to remove the rings, clean them up and store them away for winter use.  Thankfully I didn't use one of the purple glass jars.  I wonder what sort of surprise I would have had with that one?

Another Interesting Holiday Week.

The evenings are starting to cool down a bit and first thing in the morning is starting to feel a little bit autumnal.   With the tree falling on my garden early in the summer, this is the current state of my tomato plants.  They're recovering, just a bit behind.  The one large mortgage lifter tomato was eaten by something in the evening, just as it was starting to ripen.   Since then I've harvested a half dozen cherry tomatoes, just as they're starting to show signs of changing colour in hopes of getting to eat a few ourselves.  These are black cherry tomatoes, which are starting to be quite plentiful in their unripened bunches.  Not so many of the mortgage lifter tomatoes which I was hoping to have for canning as well as eating.  There are only a few of those.   Since tomatoes have  just started showing up in the grocery stores, and they were either not ripe or over ripe, I decided to pop out to the Farmer's Market and pick up a few to start canning.   Several vendors had some tomatoes, mainly beefsteak types, but one vendor had Roma type tomatoes, but only by the half bushel.  Thinking of the timing of the next couple of weeks, I brought home the half bushel, in order to make sure I got at least some tomatoes canned.  We use a bit less than a bushel of canned tomatoes over the winter.

I did two canners full yesterday and one this morning.  I ended up with 19 500 ml (pint) jars. I'm pretty happy about that.  If there are more tomatoes available at the end of the month, or my garden tomatoes ripen, then I can do another canner load full and be done.  Still, I'm pretty satisfied with this weekends results.  The Roma tomatoes were nicely ripe, but not over ripe, nor green.  They peeled quickly after scalding and I simply rough chopped them as I don't care if they are pretty when they're going into soups, stews and sauces.   They are handy to have available and it the right size as commercial tins of tomatoes tend to be larger.  

DH had a week off for holidays.  We did pop out for lunch with our daughter for her birthday.  Otherwise we mainly puttered about home doing things.  I washed fleece, wove off a scarf, re-dressed the loom, made some buttons and socks, and picked, carded and spun some of that washed fleece.  (I also read 3 novels, but I won't mention that)

DH on the other hand spent the week stacking wood.   Our regular wood guy says more people are keeping their wood rather than asking him to get rid of it.  As a result, not only are our wood deliveries smaller, but much less often.  So this year, DH broke down and ordered two larger trailer loads full.  It costs a bit more than getting the logs delivered, but he doesn't have to split it so there is a decent trade off.   Regardless, we have enough wood for this winter, and a good start on next winter's wood, which needs to dry for a year to really burn properly.

Ankle socks made on the Légaré 400 using sock yarn I got from the SOC 2026 crank in this spring.   It's from a fairly local indie dyer, Grand Valley Fibre Company.  The colours are really nice and the yarn is absolutely lovely to work with.  It made very comfortable socks.  It should have since it's super wash merino and nylon.   However, I've purchased other brands labelled merino and it wasn't nearly as nice so I highly recommend the Avid sock yarn from Grand Valley Fibres  .    

These are two new buttons using the Zwirnknopf technique. So apparently one of the button experts says that Dorset button rings are covered with the blanket stitch before you wrap and weave the button while with the Zwirnknöpf buttons you do it last.  Some of the skills overlap and it''s nice to change things up sometimes.   I'm doing a button demo later in September at a local fair, so I'm working diligently to get a few more of the Zwirnknopf style buttons done to increase the display.  They really have quite different end results.    Zwirnknöpf buttons are also sometimes called shirtlace buttons and are another old style of button.  They weren't made in England or the UK, but are from (depending on where you look) from continental Europe, mainly Central, Eastern and Northern areas.  They seem to have been first made in the early 1800's and started being exported after WWI .   They are pretty and are also fun to make.

Zwirnknopf - singular.  Zwirnknöpf - plural.   

Translates to Thread button in English

Summer is winding up!

 The summer is slipping by far too quickly.  The ridiculous heat and humidity we've had so much of this year, is something I'm not sure I'll adapt to easily.   However, there are already signs showing how short our summers are.  I drove down a nearby road the other day and there was a tree with a lone branch already turning colours.   I know this could also be due to lack of moisture, but I'm still not sure I'm ready for the leaves to turn colour.   Hubby also brought in a load of kindling yesterday.  I asked if it wasn't too early for that, but he pointed out that we'll likely have to have our first fire in 4 to 6 weeks.  Plus there are the crickets.  They are an end of summer bug; a noisy, loud, end of summer bug.

Speaking of bugs.   I noticed 3 big caterpillars on my parsley plant.  I looked them up and they were parsley worms, or the caterpillars that turn into Swallowtail Butterflies.   The next day there were only 2 of them, and today there aren't any.  They were very slow and hardly moving and large enough that a friend who has watched some all summer, said they were ready to spin their cocoons.   I looked around a bit but didn't see any cocoons, so I'm hoping they found a safe place and weren't dinner for the chooks, who have been hanging around begging for leftovers and treats!   I also hope if they did spin cocoons that they have time to complete their metamorphosis  before it turns too cold here.

With only 1 tomato plant, which was supposed to be a cherry tomato but has turned out to give large,
yellow albeit delicious fruit, I purchased a couple of baskets of tomatoes.  I quickly peeled them, chopped them up and tossed them into the canner.   I've done 2 batches this way.  It means 2 hours at most at one time for canning, unlike having a bushel and it taking 2 full days to do them up.   I remembered how easy it was that year that my tomatoes ripened slowly and I had a canner load every 3 days or so.   That was really the best way to do it.

I'm passing on my big counter balance loom.   I have a smaller jack loom which has been unused for well over a decade.  I've decided to clean it up and switch them out since the counter balance is just a bit too big to be comfortable these days.   A friend wants it so hopefully two of us will be happy about this.

I put this on the rigid heddle loom last night.   Mary Maxim is having their tent sale and while they tend to have a lot of middle of the road yarns for quality, nice but not exceptional, their prices, especially at the sale are decent.   They didn't have much sock yarn, but this stuff was nice.   The  only thing is that it is DK weight, and sort of in-between reed sizes.   It's interesting because of the way the colour changes are painted.  I thought it might be more serendipitous plaid like but it's not at all.  It's lovely in this part, with the section which is mainly white, but a little different in the next colour change with the darker blue and the little black bits.    This photo was taken at night, so despite the flash, it is dull.   The white is nice and creamy and the blue parts area. really nice shade.  The vertical black spots are great, but the part I'm not sure about is when the black and blue are in the weft, and go horizontally.  I don't have enough of this yarn to cut out the blue and black sections, and have enough yarn for the weft left and it wasn't cheap enough to grab another ball to play with, so I'm going with it.  I won't really know what it's like until it's off the loom and washed.  It could end up being lovely.

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.

What's happening these days?

The socks with the really yummy yarn are coming a long.   It's a waste to do them in plain stockinette stitch, but they are so soft and thin, I'm not unhappy with them.   I did the eye of partridge heel.   It doesn't fit my skinny heel as nicely as the regular old slip stitch heel, and it's fussy.   I won't be doing that heel for my own socks again.  It is pretty though, so it has that going for it.

I love the whole process with this yarn.  It has a lovely twist.  It isn't splitty.  It's soft and lovely to handle.    I love the colour.   It comes in a whole range of colours and varigated colours, which weren't in the little shop where I found this.   They had a very small selection of the Holst Garn Highland.

The tomatoes are ripening well this summer.    I've been canning them, one batch at a time.   I may not
have to do my 2 day canning marathon this year, with purchased tomatoes because every couple of days I get a canner load full and am done.   This is an enjoyable way to do it.    I've only had one jar not seal properly and it ended up on some mac and cheese (real, not boxed) for supper and was really good.

 The yellow tomatoes are a variety called Yellow Boy ( I think).    They are really delicious and work nicely in a sandwich.   My son in law has a basement set up for starting his tomato plants so I happily benefit from his generosity, when he passes some my way.  

This scarf is on the loom right now.   I pretty sure I don't like it.   The yarn weaves nicely although it's an acrylic that has a soft but a bit plasticy feel too it.    When I bought it, the store lights showed the orange as a bit more softer and toned down and not this bright pumpkin orange.   I'll weave it off as it's a fairly quick weave since the yarn isn't sticky.   I'm really not a huge fan of orange though, at least in broad stripes like that.

On top of this bright orange fiasco, I needed a tape measure quickly, so borrowed the one from this scarf.   Then I shoved it into a project bag with the socks when I was volunteering and needed some handwork.  I forgot to put it back on the loom before I started weaving again.   I didn't notice that until I had advanced the loom several times.  Now I have no idea how fabric I've woven, or how long the scarf is.