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