another sunday night storm

we had another Sunday evening storm with winds above 60 mph
lost some branches but don't think we had any more trees downed.
had 2+" of rain again too.  I am going to have to put in fence posts to hold up the tomato cages since they keep getting blown over.  but only after the garden dries out enough to walk in it.  it had several inches of water sitting on it last night.

our river is out of it's banks again, and water is up on the roads.

the pictures show the result of last nights storm on the beautiful maple that was in front of our house. 

taken last night right after the storm

taken this morning.  it looks like the tree is split, but the main part of the trunk is intact.

of this and that

whew! it is hot and humid here, and will be all week.  it is 10:30 pm and still 82 degrees and 83% humidity.  this is North Dakota for heaven's sake.  it is only supposed to get down to 77 tonight.  we do not have any air conditioning, unless you count numerous fans.

so no tatting, too hot and humid. I have a test tat to do for someone, so hope things improve

You may have seen the post by Fox at Tat-ology .

I never expected anything in return, but look what came in my mailbox today.

The beads on the left are 2 shades of teal, in the center pink and an assortment of blue seed and bugle beads.  on the right is a bag of findings ~ cabone rings, buttons and other interesting stuff.  below that are 2 threads, both Lizbeth with some very pretty coppery beads.

and she sent one of her lovely tatted motifs.  she has such neat stitches. and her choice of colors is just right. 
 

Thank you Fox.









a couple posts ago, I mentioned that I had ordered some Tattler reusable canning lids.  They came in the mail yesterday.

I knew that reusable canning lids had been available years ago and can't figure out why they are no longer available.

these are modeled on the old ones that I have

here is a scan of both the glass Ball brand and plastic Tattler canning lids.

I have several dozen of the glass lids.

here is a look at a side view of the 2 styles of lids, as you can see, they are very similar except the glass are that much thicker.

This is a look at the differences in the old screw rings for the glass lids and a comparison to the canning rings you can use to can with now.

the old one seems to be made out of zinc and is deeper to accommodate the thickness of the glass.





one of the reasons that I don't use the glass lids, is that I do not have any rubber rings that worked with them, and I only have a very few screw rings.  the Tattler rubber rings will work with the glass lids.  so now I know where to get more rings, but I only have a few of the zinc screw lids.

One more thing I did today.

I went out and picked the wild raspberries.  there are 2 plants out by the grain bins that were started by birds, and they started some plants behind the house too.  the ones behind the house are in the shade, so do not produce as much as the ones by the bins.  we are going to have to look at moving the ones by the bins, they are in the way.  but they do produce a lot of berries.  they are small and purple/black, but oh do they taste good.  Tomorrow, I think I will combine them with sliced nectarines and use them on shortcake.


Hope everyone has good weather and time for lots of tatting the rest of this weekend.

storm damage

Don't know when I will be back online at home.
we have been out of power since before 6pm last night.
major storm blew through, only 1.65" of rain, but very high winds,  weather stations stated 70-80 mph.

Here is just 1 of the trees we lost. and I think there may be 30 more either total destroyed like this, or tops snapped off, maybe even more.

huge old Russian Olive.  we lost many elms, ashes, cottonwoods, boxelder, damage to some maples.

the cows thought it was time to check out the soybean and cornfields so had to teach them some manners.

got to get back to work.  sneaking a few minutes between tasks

gardening

I thought that I would show some of what I have been doing instead of tatting.

I have been tatting, The hanky edging has progressed, to more then 1 quarter done,  seems slow, but too many interruptions.  I have also signed up to do some test tatting, so can't show that either.
but, here is my "time waster"

Here you see the cabbage, and what should be Snow Peas, most of them didn't come up. 
6 All Season cabbage

The carrot patch and weedy peas and volunteer radishes.  The dead grass in the back is from the winter onion patch, it was so full of quackgrass, that farmguy used some wipe-on roundup to kill off the grass so the onions wouldn't die.

here you can see what is left of the radishes,  they were yummy and the lettuce and green beans.  we have been eating the lettuce and sharing it with neighbors.

a view of the Kohlrabi and sweet corn,  we had to plant the sweet corn twice, and I think a lot of that is still volunteer field corn from last year.  you can see a lot of the corn stalk debris in the picture.  my garden is in a corner of a field near the house. 

8 White Vienna kohlrabi

picked and ate this one yesterday, couldn't wait any longer

a view of the sweet corn.  some of this farmguy and I are sure is volunteer field corn,  but he will eat it picked early enough. behind it is our soybean field.

5 tomatoes ~ 1 Celebrity, 1 Bush Beefsteak, 1 Early Goliath, 1 Black Krim, 1 Lemon Boy ~ The red tomatoes are for farmguy and canning to use for him during the winter as I am allergic to red tomatoes, but I can eat yellow in moderation.  don't know why, but I get hives in my mouth if I eat fresh red tomatoes.  The yellow don't seem to affect me as badly, so am going to try this and see if I can actually have a BLT.  I haven't had one of those for about 30 years when I gave up trying to eat red tomatoes. 

and 2 rows of shell beans,  1 Jacob's cattle & 1 Pawnee Shell. above the tomatoes in the picture

Cucumbers
there will be a slicer to pick maybe yet tonight.

Watermelon and Squash
2 Black Diamond watermelon
3 Sun Sugar Watermelon


3 Honey Bear squash
3 Carnival squash

and a couple non vegetable pictures,  this lily is a deep magenta, much deeper then the picture shows. but soooo pretty

I started out with both double and single hollyhocks, in all colors,  they have now crossed and reseeded to the point all I have left are pink singles,  but they are pretty anyway.

canning lid givaway

for many years I have canned a lot of food.  when all the kids were home, I used to can over 100 qrts of tomatoes every year, lugs of peachs, pears and nectarines.  made pints and pints of jam and vegetables.  One thing I had always wanted was a reusable canning jar lid. 
there is now such a thing available at reusablecanninglids.com 
they sell a plastic and rubber ring lid called a Tattler lid.  The lids are BPA free. And made in the USA!!

and I have found this blog ~ susangodfrey.com that is giving away some of these lids  Go here to her post for a review of these lids and sign up for her giveaway.

tatting demonstration at the Quasquicentenial

Some pictures from the 125th celebration in Mantador ND from last weekend.


Mary and Rochelle from the Fergus Falls Minnesota Heritage Lacers group came to help with demonstrating.
Here Mary is working on some trapunto quilting and Rochelle is doing Bobbin Lace.  The empty chair is mine, I was tatting in between running errands and giving tours.  The tatting displays in the bottom right corner of the picture are mine.  They brought a very interesting Bobbin lace board for anyone to try if they wanted to.  It is on the table to the left back. It uses cord wound on large dowels and wooden pins on a pegboard base.  Very clever.

Added:  The Heritage lacers were a last minute addition to my booth.  I was very pleased that they could come.  They both tat, but chose to work on other things.  There were several ladies who had questions about how to do things,  one elderly lady only knew how to do rings and just decorated stationary.  She said she had some books that talked about turning or reversing the work to do chains, but couldn't figure it out all these years, so showed her what the patterns meant by Reverse Work, and how to do a chain.  I gave her a card, so she can contact me if she needs to.  Also the local 4-H group leader stopped and wanted to know if I teach,  I said "YES"  so that may be a winter craft project for the group.  we will see.

 

A dear friend of mine that I have known since back in junior high, came and showed her hand quilted items and also her knitting.  She had many knitted caps for sale.  you can see some of them on the tables.  She runs the charity Nimble Fingers on the Prairie  that provides knitted caps, sweaters and scarves for low income children in several counties in west central Minnesota.  The facebook page for the charity is here.


















I never did get any pictures of me, but I took some of my outfit later.

looks like I should have ironed the apron before taking the picture. 

had a great time despite being so busy with other things. and the town was very busy too.