TIAS Days 4&5, a surprise in the mail & canning

After I finished tatting Day 3, my motif cupped.  Sherry posted in response to several tatters that the motif should lay flat. I considered starting over, but was able to stretch the chains enough so the flower shape laid flat.
Tonight I was able to sit and catch up with Days 4 & 5

I have no idea yet what this is, but it sure is an interesting shape. 

Several weeks ago a package showed up in the mail, I wasn't expecting anything and when I opened it, a dear friend had sent me a very nice linen square with a pretty Prairie Rose embroidered on it.  The Prairie Rose is the state flower of North Dakota.  They grow wild in places on our farm and in uncultivated areas all over the state. 

As you can see it is about 8" square with raw edges.  I need to decide how to hem it, a plain hem, or one done with what is called Hem stitching, so there are holes to join to.  Also, do I leave it square, or trim it round or oval.

The thread in the corner is Perfect Quilter Prairie Sage

I think it is the perfect color for an edging, but what edging? simple and narrow? or intricate and wide?  Any and all opinions are welcome as to shape for the linen piece and also the type of edging.

what have a been doing this week?, not much tatting, but this is how I have spent my evenings.


Sunday night I started an 18qrt roaster of tomatoes, while that got started, I peeled and chopped 20 onions and 20 cloves of garlic added that to the roaster along with some parsley and basil.  I let it cook all night long.  I also had enough cucumbers picked to pack 4 half gal jars of refrigerator dill pickles.  I now have 5 half gal jars in my fridge.

Monday night I cubed 6lbs of venison and beef and browned the meat. I then ran all the tomato mix through a sieve to remove the skins. I put about 7 qrts of the tomato pulp/juice in with the meat and some more spices and let it cook for about 3 hours ~ Chili.  The rest of the tomatoes - 6 qrts went in the fridge to make tomato soup.

Tuesday night I canned 7 qrts of chili and put 2 qrts in the fridge for eating.  Farmguy had some for both noon meal and supper and said it was good. Yeah!

Tonight I canned 14 pints of Tomato soup base.  This is a really nice recipe from my grandmother. It is condensed and thickened so when you want to have tomato soup you heat a pint up to a boil, add 2 cups milk, then heat again to serving temp. 

This coming Sunday I will be demonstrating Tatting at Uff Da dayz in Rutland ND again. Eveyone is welcome to come and experience some good food, good crafts, sillyness - there are pig races - a parade and good times. The nearby Coteau des Prairies Lodge nearby is a wonderful place to stay.

Speaking of this coming Sunday the weather service has predicted a low of 30 degrees over night. If that is the case, and how can the National Weather Service be trusted when the gov has shut down??? But if they are telling the truth, then we will have to cover the tomatoes.  They have been bearing and ripening quite well this year as opposed to last year, so I don't think we will be putting up the hoop house.

What I did this weekend instead of tatting

I have been tatting, really I have.  I have finished a test tat doily, am involved in another test tat, and have finished 3 motifs for my veil.  The veil motifs are the only ones I can show at the moment, but because of the very dark color, I need really good sunlight to take the photos, and that has been lacking lately.

This weekend we decided to dig some of the carrots in the garden, The neighbors who garden with us and we decided that too many were getting too big and splitting when it rained, so we were going to dig the bigger ones, well, we ended up digging 3 of the 5 rows.  This was a great year for carrots, not so great for other crops, but carrots did very well.

So, we ended up with 4 big dishpans full.  The neighbor gal took one and I had the other 3. 
A nice little gal came and gave me a hand with the scrubbing saturday, and this is what we ended up with.

Overflowing dish drainer

13qrt mixing bowl

As you can see some of the carrots are very large. 
They were all colors,  White, Yellow, Orange & Purple.  They do taste a bit different, the white and yellow are milder and the purple is slightly different then the orange.  The purple are only skin deep and they will bleed out when you cook it, The center is a very bright yellow green, surrounded by light orange with a purple skin.  The big one you see on the top of the dish drainer is a yellow one.  The white ones usually stayed slimmer, but grew tall out of the ground so they have green tops,  you can see one in the lower left corner of the drainer.  it is actually odd shaped.  It grew is a stair step fashion.  Some of the yellow ones have a bit of green on the top as well, but not as much as the white.

Sunday after church I started slicing, I ended up with this

13qrt bowl

 I filled this, put 7 qrt jars in the canner,  filled it again, then filled the roaster you can see beside it.

I put 5 batches through the canner yesterday.  I took the last ones out at 1 this morning.
This is what my table looked like

14 qrts of plain carrots
36 pints of plain carrots
3 pints of dilled carrots
3 pints of dill pickled carrots

The white lids are the Tattler reusable brand.  They have been showing up in the Fleet Farm stores in the nearby towns, so they aren't just on the internet.  I like them.

A close up of the jars

The look pretty good don't they. 

Well, I am sneaking the time to do this at work.  So gotta run and get back to it.  Have a really great day everyone and please join in Sherry P's TIAS.   Here is Day 1.

I hope to get some tatting done tonight.

Before & after

Last Saturday I showed you a picture of the pots of tomatoes I had set on the stove to cook down.

I figured that was about 40 quarts of cut up tomatoes cooking to soften the skins and pulp.  After a few hours, I was able to put all of them through the sieve.

I should have taken pictures of the pots of tomato pulp and juice simmering on the stove but I didn't.  I wasn't able to do all the cooking down in one session so it took longer to get to the point of canning then I would have liked.

Last evening (Tuesday) I decided it was time to get them canned.
I used quart jars this time instead of the pints from the last batch a week ago, but it still took 3 batches through the pressure canner. 

Here is what I ended up with.

20 quarts of tomato sauce.

There are still some tomatoes ripening in the basement, but no where near as many as I have already canned.  They will soon be all done I hope.

new news about our grandson... things are looking up.  some more doctors get to poke and prod tomorrow, but he may be able to go home yet this weekend.  All of your prayers, and good thoughts have been a big help. Thank you so much.

news and prayers please

Last Friday, our newest grandson was born.  His name is Scot.  Saturday night he was transfered to the nearest large hospital with a NICU.
He has some issues with his breathing. 
Please pray that the doctors can figure out just how to fix the problem.

Thank you.

In the meantime I am still tatting snowflakes, and tonight I am canning tomato sauce.  I have gotten 14 qrts of sauce through the canner, and will start the 3rd batch now.

oh, Scot makes 11 grandchildren for us, 6 girls and 5 boys

Christmas tatting

While I can't show you exactly what I am tatting as many of the recipients read this blog, I can show you a bit about what I am doing.

all threads are size 20,
colors and manufacture are... starting from the top,

Lizabeth Vineyard Harvest
Manuela  Gold
Lizabeth Denim
Flora Blue & White varigated
Manuela(?)  (old no label)
Lizabeth Autumn apple Pie
Lizabeth Fruit Fizz
Lizabeth Pink Cocoa
Manuela   (no label)
Lizabeth Ocean Sunset
Lizabeth Juicy Watermelon
Manuela (no label)

The tatting is a pattern that is available in the book Tatting by Tatsy and you see about 1/3 of what I am making, that is all I will say about that for now.

The shuttle is a Pop-a-Bobbin ~ I love them. they are really great, if you have a chance to get one from Jane Eborall's etsy shop, please do so.  you can keep track of when they are for sale be reading either her blog, or her sister Sally's blog as it is actually Sally's dh  "I'm in the garage" who makes them.

I picked up the little bells at the Nordic Needle in Fargo ND

whatever I am making, I will need to make about 2 doz.

on the home front, we have gotten 2 of the 3 deer we have licenses for so far this fall.
I bbqed the ribs from the doe on friday and half the ribs from the buck on saturday, and on sunday stripped the meat off the bones and this is the result, 5 quarts of meat canned. (on the right below)

The jars on the left are the last of the tomatoes, yellow, red and black krim, so they are multi-hued.
The neighbor brought over his ribs tonight, they are soaking in the cooler with the rest of ours, and will be bbqed tomorrow night.

If you remember, I have blogged previously about the Tattler Reusable canning lids, I have used them for most of my canning this year, both water bath and pressure canner.  So far so good, I have only opened 1 jar of peaches, and they were great.  I didn't have any more failures then I have had with the metal lids, but I have a large supply of the metal lids so have been using them as well.  If you are interested, I would recommend the Tattler lids. They work just as well and in the long run are cheaper then the metal lids.  The only thing I would like, is to be able to buy some of the rings occasionally without having to buy the metal lids with them.  I reuse my rings many times, as you can see, I remove them from the jars for storage, but over time they do rust. 

well, time for bed, it is after midnight.
have a great day tomorrow, whatever you have to do, and hopefully there is some time for tatting.

a finished project (or 2)

I have finished 2 tatting projects in the past 2 days.
one is the test tat for Martha Ess, her new book will be ready in the not too distant future.

the other project in my traveling one,  I always have something to work on in my purse or car so I don't have to sit around twiddling my thumbs.  I am not exactly a patient person.

There is no pattern for this,  I started out trying to do a 1 round snowflake.  Since it was a traveling project, I wanted a very easy stitch count, so there are 5 ds between all picots on the rings and the chains.  I don't have the pattern written up, don't know if I will unless asked, as it looks similar to other motifs that are out there I think.
As you can see, it has 7 arms not 6, so it is not an actual snowflake.  I tried, but 6 just wouldn't lay flat, and I didn't want to have to block it .  The thread is Flora size 20 in color 239.

I am trying to get all the canning caught up.  We just put 500 lbs of beef in the freezer, so there is no more room there, so anything from the garden as to be canned.  I did 14 qrts of dill pickles tonight, and there is an 18 qrt roaster full of apples cooking in the kitchen right now.  there is at least another roaster full of apples still in the bag.  I will make apple butter with what is in cooking now, and apple sauce with the 2nd batch.  I can't leave it for this weekend, as I will be away (see previous post). 

I have been using the Tattler reusable canning lids, and so far so good.

next day update on lids

This morning the jars of peaches were cooled and I checked the seals.   of the new reusable lids, out of 18 lids 3 did not seal, but I do not consider that all bad, as it is a new product to me, and uses a bit of new technique, mainly backing off the ring 1/4" and then tightening the rings coming out of the canner.

So, I rinsed the lids, rubber rings, and screw bands put them back on the jars, set them in a new canner of barely water, turned on the burner and slowly brought the whole thing to a boil, let it boil for 30 min and then took the jars out, tightened the screw bands and let them set while I went to work.

this evening 2 of the jars were sealed, the 3rd went into the fridge to eat.

now, I used old miracle whip jars, not regular canning jars so that might have something to do with the # of non sealers. Also, after you first put the lids and bands on, you snug the band down, then hold the center of the lid with your index finger, and back the screw band off 1/4" .  I am pretty sure that there were some of the lids that I backed off more then 1/4".  so I am not too unhappy with the lids yet.

this morning I squeezed out the juice from the cooked peach skins that I had left draining overnight in cheesecloth and got about 4 C of juice. put that in the fridge until I got off work this afternoon.  Then I put the peach juice in a pot, added the less then 1 cup of syrup left from canning the peaches yesterday and also added 4 C of apple juice to make up for the missing peach juice and the recipe for Peach Honey in called for 8 C of juice.  brought the juices to a boil and added 4C of sugar.  continued to cook the mix down until the thermometer read 225 F  and ended up with 6 half pint jars of peach/apple honey.  I had thrown in a half of a cinnamon stick for about 15 min during the cooking to give a bit of added flavor but didn't want too much or it would overwhelm the light peach and apple flavors. 

tomorrow morning I will check the little jars to see if they sealed, as I used the reusable regular size lids on them.

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

as I promised, I am posting about the Tattler Reusable Canning lids that I mentioned previously in this post. 

I used them for the first time tonight to can peaches.  I still have the last batch in the canner, but so far, so good. I didn't have any problems with putting them together, or attaching them to the jars.  The only problem I had was tightening them after taking them out of the canner so I didn't burn my fingers.

I have 17 quarts and 8 pints of peaches. I did some of the pints with the familiar metal lids as they are for our neighbor.  I will let you know tomorrow once the jars are cooled, if they all sealed. 

I stumbled across a recipe for Peach Honey at this website  so right now the peach skins are cooking, will be interested to see how this turns out. 

Testing another pattern for Martha Ess, so no tatting to show.

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.