Quilting Retreats and Cabbages

I did a podcast interview yesterday morning with a woman who runs a quilting retreat center in Florala, Alabama. We had a lovely conversation and part of me wishes I were close enough to that part of the country to spend a few days there. I told her that the husband has observed that men don’t do things like “go on retreat” for their hobbies, and she noted that women often have to physically remove themselves to a different environment in order to get away from all of the stuff that occupies their brains. I understand this. I have to take a road trip at least once every six weeks or so or I start to get twitchy.

I did the post-production editing right after we finished, and that interview will be next week’s episode.

After lunch, I made spiced red cabbage. The two largest heads of cabbage filled exactly seven quart jars:

This will be great with roast pork this winter.

I also made a couple of pumpkin pies for the husband and used up the last of what I canned in 2023. Canning pumpkin (or Georgia Candy Roaster) is on the list for later this month.

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One of my previous podcast guests, Robert Alex Jackson of H Clothing Company, is participating in a unique event called the Farm-to-Fashion Fair, to be held in Golden, Colorado later this month.

This event is being hosted by the Mountains and Plains Fibershed. The book Fibershed, by Rebecca Burgess, is all about the concept of a sustainable textile system. Fibershed is a non-profit organization with affiliate groups around the world. Montana also has a Fibershed chapter and I am hoping to get one of the board members on the podcast soon. We’ve been trying to coordinate our schedules for several months now but summer is a busy time for fiber producers.

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I will be at the Mennonite Country Auction this Saturday in Ritzville, WA. I am going to help sell bacon, ham, and sausage produced by Stampede Packing here in Kalispell. The owners belong to our church. Margaret, Elaine, and I have gone with them to the sale in the past. This one-day event raises about $100,000 for Mennonite Central Committee relief efforts around the world. Unfortunately, I am hearing that fewer and fewer people are stepping up to help organize and run the sale. (Sound familiar?) I’ve donated quilts to the sale in the past, although I don’t have any to donate this year. I do have some items to donate to the yard sale, though. (Thank you, JC!) The weather is supposed to be gorgeous and I am looking forward to the drive over.

Coats and Tops

My tops have been hemmed and put into rotation. I haven’t decided what is up next, although I pulled a few fabrics from the stash for consideration. The zippers I ordered for the blue quilted jacket arrived last week, so that project is near the top of the pile. I’m going to look through my stash of new patterns, too, to see what I might like to try next.

This is the rayon spandex Laundry Day Tee:

Love the colors and the print in this one, too.

I picked up the green wool coating fabric from the dry cleaners yesterday. That is for my coat class with Ryliss Bod at the Sewing and Design School in Tacoma, which is the day before the trouser drafting workshop. I’m trying to decide if I want to take the 880 with me on that trip or use a school machine. I’m leaning toward taking the 880. It came with sturdy luggage, so it should be nice and secure on the trip over. And I would prefer to use a machine that is familiar to me.

This is the line art for Ryliss’ coat pattern:

Ryliss Bod's coat pattern

I tried on several versions of the coat when I was there last year and loved the style.

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I’ve been watching the coverage of the flooding in North Carolina and Tennessee. My friends Bob and Deana, who came to visit two weeks ago, were supposed to fly from Denver into Asheville last Saturday. Obviously, that was an impossibility. They flew into Knoxville, instead, and made it to their home in eastern Tennessee on Sunday. Last I heard, two bridges in their town were closed due to structural issues. The homesteading group I belong to has a lot of members in that area and I know some of them personally. Nicole Sauce, host of the Living Free in Tennessee podcast and the absolute queen of community-building, put together a relief operation with 24 hours of the disaster. She set up a donation page, organized people in Tennessee to gather supplies, coordinated a distribution center, and got help to residents in the Roan Mountain area. She had to peel off yesterday to go to the other side of the state—the Self-Reliance Festival is this weekend in Camden, Tenneessee—but as far as I know, relief operations with that group are continuing.

And now there is a longshoremen strike. Canning season may be stressful, but we do what we do here for a reason. I understand that not everyone is able, or wants to, prep at the level that we do, but everyone should have some basic supplies and contingency plans in place. The government is not coming to save you. Connect with your community. I am thrilled that I had enough tomatoes and other produce in the garden to share with people this year. We’ve gotten corn, summer sausage, and other items in return. It’s all part of creating a strong network.

[You don’t have to live in a rural area to have a strong network. It may just look a bit different where you live. DD#2 has built her own community in Seattle—in the heart of the city—of friends who help each other out.]

Mennonite Disaster Service is also working in areas hit by the hurricane, so if you’re looking to make a monetary donation, please consider them. Our congregation has an active MDS unit and several of our members have traveled all over the world to help in places in need.

Sewing

I finished a bit of paperwork yesterday morning, then headed upstairs to commune with fabric. I have so many projects I want to make that I was afraid I would come down with a bad case of analysis paralysis, so I pulled out a couple of tried-and-true patterns and went stash diving for a quick win. I cut out a long-sleeve Laundry Day Tee using a beautiful rayon spandex. I know that Karina at Lifting Pins and Needles has decided that she no longer likes rayon spandex—and I agree with her assessment that it can start to look ratty rather quickly—but I am going to use up what’s in the stash.

After that, I cut out a Jalie Nathalie top from some French terry I bought last year from KnitFabric.com. I may go back to them to buy more this fall as they have some wonderful prints. I wore my first Nathalie top A LOT last year and knew I wanted a few more. It’s great as a single layer, but I can also throw on a turtleneck underneath for additional warmth.

The LDT and the Nathalie top went together quickly on the serger. My poor serger has been neglected most of the summer.

I also pulled two tops out of my closet that needed slight alterations on the side seams. I undid the hems and made the necessary adjustments, and now I have four tops to hem on the coverstitch machine. I had to stop there to feed chickens and make dinner.

Here is the Nathalie top (unhemmed)

I love the print and the fabric.

I’ll post a photo of the LDT after I hem it. I should be able to do all my hemming today after I run errands.

My attitude is much better now that I have been able to do some sewing. I desperately needed a day when I could be by myself and concentrate on sewing projects from start to finish. I don’t do well when my days get chopped into little bits of useless time or when I am having to manage other people’s energy. Sometimes, the husband and I will just sit together in the evening and breathe the same oxygen without talking to each other because quiet is what we both need.

And I know I said I was done with canning for a couple of weeks, but my red cabbages were so beautiful that I went ahead and started a batch of spiced red cabbage.

I am using a recipe from the Ball Blue Book. I tried it one year and it is so good with roast pork that I try to keep some on hand. Making it is a multi-day process. It has to be shredded and salted for at least 24 hours before being canned. I cut up the two largest heads and put them in my three-gallon crock. This should give me a dozen pints, which is plenty.

Beautiful Apples

Forty quarts of salsa later, I am done with tomatoes for the season. A cold front is supposed to come through this afternoon and we are under a freeze watch for tonight. It’s hard to tell what will happen; cold air sinks, and sometimes the valley will get colder temperatures than we will up here on the side of the mountain. We can’t put off a killing frost forever, though.

While I was waiting on salsa to finish processing yesterday, I cleaned off the Honeycrisp and Red Wealthy trees. As with the Lodi apples, there was almost no bug damage. I found one apple that had a hole in it with a ladybeetle inside eating lunch. That was it. Our apples look as nice as—or better than—the Honeycrisps I get at the store:

The husband will snack on these over the next several weeks.

I am fussy about apples. The modern commercial varieties, like Honeycrisps, are too sweet. (Honeycrisps do keep well, however.) I prefer apples that taste more like the ones I ate when I was growing up. The closest I’ve found are Macintosh and Cortland, and now I have those trees in my orchard. State Fair is another one I like. That’s the advantage of growing your own food. You get to choose what you like.

I went up to the church around 3 pm to help with cleanup from the craft co-op sale. I think it helps to have someone from the congregation there (me) who knows where things go. Breaking down the sale goes much faster than setting it up, and we were done within two hours. Sarah and I chatted for a bit about the sale and she said thought it had gone very well. I would very much like to make enough product this winter to participate in next year’s sale, but I’ll have to see how things play out. I have to get my schedule under control.

I am feeling the need to pull back from a lot of my activities because people have a tendency to treat me as an unpaid personal assistant/therapist. I spend an awful lot of my time and energy maintaining boundaries and dealing with personalities and that has been exhausting lately. What is going to happen is that I am going to absent myself for a while and people will have to figure out how to solve problems without always running to me for answers.

I’m not exaggerating; you can ask the husband because he has been witness to a lot of this nonsense. He teases me that I must have been sent to the penal colony of Earth because I committed a crime on some distant planet.

When our former pastor retired two years ago, he resigned from all his volunteer activities and said that after one year, he would reassess and decide which ones to become involved with again. I note that he has not rejoined many of those organizations. I don’t blame him one bit. I suspect he is enjoying some newfound freedom. That was a brilliant strategy and one I find very attractive.

I am going to sew all day tomorrow. I may also turn off my phone.

All the Salsa

I made 26 quarts of salsa yesterday. There are 14 on the counter and 12 in the canner:

I don’t usually run two canner loads in one day but I was motivated to get this done. And it’s a truism of canning season that no matter how many stock pots you own, you don’t have enough stock pots. I’ll have to pick up one or two more. The husband and the crew were here when I mixed up the first batch, so I had them taste it. The husband suggested I add a few more hot peppers. I may have to include a couple of hot pepper plants in the rotation every year because those six surprise plants were very popular with us and with the neighbors.

I still have one batch of tomatoes that I left warming in the roaster overnight. I’ll run the last canner load of salsa this morning and that will be it. The only canning left to do now is pumpkin and that can wait a few weeks. The tomatoes are out of the freezer and there is room for pork.

One of our church members and his sister came over yesterday morning to get some tomatoes. I made an announcement last week during our service that anyone who wanted tomatoes was welcome to come and help themselves. Looking at the forecast, we may get a frost tomorrow night but I am not going to cover anything. I think it’s time to call an end to gardening season for 2024.

Something has been burrowing into the greenhouse. The husband and I saw this the other evening when we went out to fold up the tarp that was on the tomato patch:

Whatever it is, it was determined. I don’t keep food or produce in the greenhouse so I’m not sure why it wanted to get in.

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The acrylic insert for my sewing table arrived yesterday. Monday or Tuesday next week is going to be devoted to nothing but sewing. I’ve pulled a few cool-weather fabrics for making some long-sleeve tops and hoodies and I have those quilts to finish.

If the long-range weather forecasts hold, I may get my wish for a very snowy winter. I am anticipating lots of sewing time in December, January, and February. Putting off sewing until after canning season has been hard, but that is how I have chosen to prioritize my life, and I am fortunate to be in a position to make those choices. All things in the proper time.

I am Ready for Snow

The snow tires are on the Jeep. I just have to add my winter supplies and I will be ready for whatever Mother Nature throws at us.

I stopped at the church on the way home to see how setup for market was progressing. I think this is going to be a fantastic sale! There are so many lovely and unique items. The key word this year was “up,” because horizontal display space is limited. Many vertical display units have been added to provide more room. I borrowed this photo from my friend Carol:

I think most of this is Sarah’s. She made jams, lots of adorable zipper pouches and bags, and she always brings linen tea towels and soap. Local peeps, I highly recommend checking out the sale today or tomorrow. The location is the Mennonite church in Creston.

I should have taken more photos but it was pretty chaotic in there when I stopped.

Fortunately, I am not the only person who belongs to the co-op but doesn’t have product in the sale. They don’t kick you out for non-production.

I came home, made lunch for the husband and me—he stopped to get one of the trailers—and then started in on salsa. I cooked down several large stock pots of tomatoes. I’ll add the other ingredients today and process it. I’ll be very happy when salsa is done and the pork has been picked up and delivered, because all of that is weighing on me right now.

While I was in town, I went to Kohls because I needed some socks and underwear. I tried on a couple of pairs of pants, too; I’ve got plenty of dress pants for church and plenty of jeans to wear around the yard, but I need some pants that are in the middle—nicer jeans and some black or navy blue casual pants for fall. This is usually a failed quest; after making basic pull-on trousers and realizing just how badly most ready-to-wear pants fit me, I’ve given up on finding anything. I don’t have time to source fabric and make myself some right now, and I also want to wait until after my trouser drafting class next month to start that process. However, the Lauren Conrad brand at Kohls has been carrying “super high-waisted” pants. On anyone else, they would be super high-waisted. On me, they fit right at my waist. I bought a pair of dark wash flare jeans and a pair of black twill straight leg pants. The black ones, for some odd reason, were unfinished at the bottom. I hemmed them while the tomatoes were cooking down and now they are the perfect length.

I will be very curious to see what kind of custom pattern for me comes out of this trouser drafting class. Not only do I need a longer crotch depth on my pants, my hips are also higher than average. My widest hip measurement is 5" below my waist, not the standard 9" below the waist.

Joanns has some stretch corduroy in a lovely deep emerald color, so I bought enough for the Ramona Skirt from Tilly and the Buttons:

Unfortunately, the PDF version of the pattern is out of stock for some reason. I suppose I could order the print version; by the time it arrives from the UK, I might finally have time to sew. I probably could hack whatever comes out of the trouser class into a skirt pattern, too.

Only 89 Days Until Christmas

Yesterday’s Christmas stocking class was so much fun. I had two students—both of whom have been in some of my other classes—so we were able to relax and enjoy the process. If I teach that class again, it will have to be over two days or the students will have to do some prep work ahead of time. I would have struggled having to teach a larger group. The techniques are not complicated, but they require a lot of threading and rethreading the serger.

One student finished her stocking:

The other student was very close to finishing but wanted to do the final bits of sewing at home, so I didn’t get a photo of her stocking.

My friend Janet—who schedules classes for the store and was there yesterday—gifted me some stretch lace in both black and white, which reminds me that one of my goals for 2024 was to make some underwear. I still have three months.

I have a serger mastery class on the calendar for next month and that is the last class for 2024. I am not going to try to schedule anything else. September was an exhausting month and October will be busy, too. I just want my schedule to slow down so I can sew. And it takes time to develop new classes for next year. I think one of my upcoming podcast episodes is going to be about how to find time to sew when you don’t have time to sew. 🫤

The Simplicity.com website has a fun online exhibit posted for National Sewing Month on the history of the Big 4 pattern companies (now referred to as the “Core 4”). The exhibit includes vintage photos, background information on the families involved, and links to current pattern offerings.

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I’m not sure how the garden will look this morning; a strong cold front came through last night with a thunderstorm and some hail. Fortunately, my friend Anna went through the tomato patch before the storm hit. Spokane got the storm, too, along with a lot of blowing dust coming in from the fields to the west.

I met some of the members of our co-op at the Mennonite church last evening to give them my key for the weekend. They were bringing in display items needed for setup today. The co-op sale is tomorrow and Saturday. I would like to pop in and help during the weekend but much depends on how things play out. Getting the tomatoes out of the freezer to make room for the pork is priority #1.

Stockings and Salsa

I haven’t had anything exciting to write about since my friends left. Mostly, I am playing catch-up and trying to juggle a bunch of spinning plates, and I’m not sure any of that makes for good blog fodder. I am teaching an all-day serger class tomorrow on Gail Yellen’s Christmas Stocking pattern:

I spent some time yesterday afternoon prepping supplies for the class. I don’t usually make the project while teaching, but for this class, I have the pattern cut out and ready to assemble. This pattern is sufficiently complicated that I think it will be helpful if I illustrate some of the techniques.

I also made up a notebook of bag and pouch patterns I want to tackle in the next couple of months and set it aside with a stack of fabric for each pattern. If I buy a pattern and don’t get to making it right away, it tends to get lost. I’ve started putting patterns and supplies together so I don’t have to go looking when the urge strikes to make something.

First up on that list is the Running With Scissors pattern from byAnnie.com:

This will be useful when traveling to classes.

While running errands yesterday morning, I stopped in at the tire place and had them order snow tires for the Jeep. I’m having those put on Thursday. Yes, it’s early—technically, I am not supposed to put them on before October 1—but I’m going to be driving over Snoqualmie Pass several times in the next couple of months and I’m not taking any chances. The husband is going to order chains for me as well.

Friday will be Salsa Day. That might bleed over into Saturday, depending on how things go, but if not, I’ll spend Saturday cleaning up the rest of the garden. It looks like the weather may stay warm into the first part of October, but I am declaring an end to gardening season. I have two beds of lettuce in the herb garden and that will keep us until it freezes.

Digging Spuds in September

Despite the 31F thermometer reading here at the house reading yesterday morning, the garden does not appear to have been hit by a frost. Had we not covered the tomatoes, of course, there would have been a killing frost because that’s how that works. I pulled up all the soaker hoses around the potatoes, then brought in the corn to blanch and freeze. The husband said he was available to help dig potatoes after lunch.

Right after he got back from his trash run, a golden retriever showed up in our yard. I put this picture up on some local Facebook sites to see if anyone was looking for her.

We fed her and gave her some water and she followed us around. Unfortunately, we’re in an area that serves as a dumping ground for unwanted animals—everything from dogs to roosters. We needed no discussion, though; if she had been abandoned, we would have adopted and kept her. Later in the evening, someone in the neighborhood came to claim her. They had been shooting at their house and she got spooked and ran away.

We spent a couple of hours digging potatoes and have a goodly supply for the winter. (That’s one of the husband’s very large, very deep wheelbarrows, so there are more potatoes there than you might think.)

I’ll sort these for storage this afternoon. We planted German Butterballs—which will get eaten first because they don’t keep as well—and a lot of russets (Clearwater and Umatilla).

The forecast is for another stretch of warm weather this week and no frost danger. At some point, though, I will have to call an end to the tomatoes and pull the plants.

I am looking at my calendar for the next couple of weeks and I may have to jettison some activities. I’m feeling like I don’t have time to stop and catch my breath and that is not a good thing. As much as I want to participate in market later this week—even if I am not selling anything—other projects here have priority. I’ll see how today and tomorrow play out and reassess. I’m teaching an all-day serger class on Wednesday.

So Much Fun With Friends

I’m still here; I’ve been enjoying several wonderful days with my friends who are visiting. The four of them arrived Wednesday evening in time for dinner. Bob and Deana live in Tennessee and are the friends I visited twice last year when the three of us went to Nicole Sauce’s Spring Workshop in April and then to the Self-Reliance Festival in October. Bob and I have been friends since I was 14 and he was 16. We both played trombone—he still does—and sat next to each other in band. They brought our other high school friends, Joyce and Dodie, with them. Joyce and Dodie were also in band. They live in Ohio. Ours is a long and enduring friendship even though we don’t get to see each other very often.

Bob and Joyce went hiking in Glacier Park on Thursday, and Deana and Dodie and I went fabric shopping. We stopped at the community center, first, where the Thursday sewing group was getting ready for next week’s craft co-op sale. After they met everyone, we headed to town and stopped at all three fabric stores. Deana stocked up on fabrics that she can’t get where she lives and I picked up a few supplies and two more presser feet for the Bernina 880. We all met back at our house for dinner and conversation that evening.

I was happy that the weather cooperated. The forecast initially had been for rain, but we’ve had lovely, sunny days. We decided that the Friday outing would be a hike to Avalanche Lake in Glacier Park. This is a hike the husband and his father and I did many times with the girls when they were little, but I haven’t hiked in the park for at least a decade. It’s not a long hike—two miles in and two miles back—but the trail is rocky and there is some elevation gain. Some of us were feeling it by the time we got to the lake. We stopped for a few selfies along the way. (That’s me in the middle.)

There were a lot of people hiking the trail yesterday. When we were planning this trip, I suggested the group come in September, after the height of tourist season, but I was a bit surprised at the amount of congestion in the park even at this time of year.

I had made dinner ahead of time and put it in the fridge before we left to go hiking, so when we got back, all I had to do was heat up the pulled pork and put out the potato salad. After dinner, we all went out to the garden to spread a giant tarp over the tomato patch. It’s 31F right now and the temperature likely will drop a few more degrees before sunrise. I’ll leave the tarp on until Monday; after this frost, temperatures rebound back up close to 80F, so the tomatoes should keep producing for another week, at least. I think the pumpkins and butternut squash are done, though.

Joyce and Deana both crochet. Joyce is working on a granny square blanket on this trip. (They started in Colorado and drove up here.) I love granny squares but I can’t crochet to save my life. I admire other people’s work:

The bright colors are wonderful.

The four of them are leaving this morning to head back to Bozeman. I am sorry to see them go but glad that we all got to spend a few days together here in Montana. I hope they will come back again next year.

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I have to look at the to-do list today and get myself organized. I’ve been quilting the I Spy top here and there and it’s almost done. I need to quilt the border and then I can bind it. I may not get the baby quilt done by the end of September, but I will try. Next week is full—I am teaching an all-day class on Wednesday and the craft co-op sale will take up Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

I think I may just take advantage of the nice weather and spend the day cleaning up the garden and putting it to bed.

My Peeps, Past and Present

Some of you may not know that I produce a weekly sewing podcast called The Straight Stitch: A Podcast About Sewing and Other Fiber Arts. Today’s podcast episode is an interview with two of the members of the Mountain Brook Craft Cooperative. I am also a member of this group, which meets on Thursdays at our community center. I thought it would be fun to hear how the cooperative began and how it has grown in the past 15 years. Carol Edgar is one of the founding members of the Cooperative and Sarah Anderson is the current president. (Sarah is also the author of the Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs by Storey Publishing.) Sunnie and Robin also belong to the co-op. This is an amazingly talented group of women and I am continually inspired by the beautiful items they create. Our annual sale is coming up in another week.

These are a sampling of the gorgeous bags that our friend Judy makes and will have in the sale.

If you’d like to listen to the episode, you can do so on the podcast website. The podcast is also available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other podcatchers.

Unless I find a way to warp the space/time continuum to give me another 24 hours in each day, I probably won’t have anything in this year’s sale, but I am contributing by handling the social media marketing for the sale. The podcast is a piece of that.

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I trimmed the Christmas quilt—the one I finished quilting Sunday afternoon—and it’s awaiting binding. I’ll have to look in my bin of binding to see if I have something already made up. If not, I’ll make binding for it.

Today is a housecleaning day. My canning supplies will be stored temporarily so my visiting friends have a place to sit. Three of my high school friends—and the girlfriend of one of them—are touring Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. They will be here for a few days. I am excited to see them!

We are supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon, so the first task on the to-do list is to drive the golf cart and wagon out to the garden and bring in a few more watermelons and some cabbages.

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I had a visit with my naturopath yesterday morning. I gifted him a bag of Blue Boar Berry tomatoes. Because I have nothing that needs fixing besides my knees and hips—which are feeling much better thanks to the stretching exercises—we spent most of the time talking about combatting the effects of getting older. He has been my primary care doc for almost 20 years now. I know his wife, too, because she is a knitter. I’ve been seeing him twice a year, but he told me I can stretch that out to 10-12 months. When I first started seeing him, I was severely hypothyroid and had a host of other associated problems. He has helped me wean (mostly) off my thyroid medication. I am down to a tiny dose twice a week.

On to Salsa and Pie Filling

The pantry has enough jars of tomato sauce. I ended this production run with 32 quarts, which have been added to about a dozen left from last year. That should do us. I’m moving on.

Yesterday morning, I made a few trips out to the garden with the golf cart and wagon:

This is such a great setup. WS came over in the afternoon to get eggs and wanted to know how much we wanted for the golf cart. The husband told him it was not for sale.

[I have let him drive it around the driveway a couple of times—with me in it, no less.]

A few years ago, Elysian introduced all of us to the Georgia Candy Roaster Squash. I planted one plant this year. It produced these:

They are huge. I’m glad I planted the Georgia Roaster, though. I can use this for my pumpkin pie filling in case the Winter Luxury pumpkins don’t ripen. It’s going to be close with the pumpkins and the butternut squash.

I brought in all of the Georgia Roasters, the last of the zucchini—I pulled the plants—and a couple of watermelons. The chickens love watermelon rinds. Putting a watermelon rind in the chicken yard is like putting a piece of meat into a tank full of piranhas.

I’ve also got a couple of volunteer tomato plants in the squash plot. I can’t tell if there are two separate plants (they are huge) or one mutant variety. I had both Black Strawberry and a Zebra variety in that area last year. Whatever came up is producing these, which look a little like both:

It is barely controlled chaos with the DNA out there, let me tell you. I might save seed from these and see what I get next year. The husband said that if I develop a new variety, I can call it the “Janato.” Such a comedian.

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It rained off and on yesterday. After lunch, I made the backing for the I Spy quilt and got the top basted together with batting and backing. I’d like to get it quilted this afternoon. I also worked on trimming half-square triangles for the baby quilt. They are coming along.

Green Tomato Sauce?

I knocked out another 14 quarts of tomato sauce yesterday. The ingredients of the sauce consist of whatever tomatoes happen to be ripe, although I try to make sure half of them are paste tomatoes.

I am a bit particular about my paste tomato varieties. I’ve tried them all—Amish Paste, Romas, San Marzanos—and none do as well as a variety I happened upon some years ago called Oregon Star. That variety is the backbone of my tomato sauce. The fruit is huge; I’ve had some upwards of a pound apiece. It is also one of the earliest ripeners in the garden. I save seed every year, which is not easy because the fruit is so meaty that getting even half a dozen seeds out of one tomato is an accomplishment.

I also planted Purple Russian paste tomatoes, which are another favorite. They are much smaller and a lovely dusky burgundy. This year, I tried Northern Ruby paste tomatoes from Triple Divide Seeds. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by that one. The fruit is smaller—about half the size of the Oregon Star tomatoes—but the plants are loaded. I’ll probably keep that one in the rotation for next year.

Added to the paste tomatoes in these two recent batches have been 1) Cherokee Purple, another favorite and early ripener; 2) Dirty Girl, which is the open-pollinated version of Early Girl; and 3) Aunt Ruby’s Green. I added Aunt Ruby’s to the lineup a few years ago and have been saving seed. The plants are outdoing themselves this year.

Every tomato is huge. They never turn red, which can be confusing if you’ve never grown them before. They start out dark green and gradually turn yellowish from the bottom. The best way to determine ripeness is to squeeze them.

I like these in sauce because they have a unique flavor. I’m tempted to make a batch of sauce using only this variety just to see what green tomato sauce might taste like.

I make a pass through the tomato patch every couple of days and bring in anything that is starting to turn red. (The UPS driver asked me the other day how I keep turkeys out of the garden. I don’t, and they can do almost as much damage as the ground squirrels.) At the moment, every horizontal surface in the house is covered with tomatoes:

This is a south-facing window. Tomatoes ripen quickly here. The Oregon Star paste tomatoes are in the box on the left.

I am close to being done with sauce, and now I need to start on salsa. I’m doing a bit of a dance trying to keep one of our freezers empty for pork. I want to freeze these tomatoes for salsa because the skins will slip off more easily, but finding time to make the salsa before the pork arrives is going to be tricky.

The Blue Boar Berry tomato plants are doing exceptionally well. They were started from seed from a tomato that spent last winter on the ground in the garden. Mother Nature is amazing. I should take a picture of the plants, because they are trying to take over the world. The tomatoes start out dark purple, almost black, and turn red when ripe.

I’ve been watching Michael Snyder’s Pacific Northwest Weather Watch channel on YouTube and it looks like we might get one more warmup before the end of the month. I haven’t yet had to cover the tomatoes to protect them from frost.

All the Sauce

Yesterday was a tomato sauce day. I’ve got this down to a science. I started cooking down four stock pots of tomatoes just after breakfast. By 2 pm, I had consolidated them to two pots and let them cool enough to run through the Saucemaster. The canner load finished processing just as the husband got home. I process my tomato sauce in the pressure canner because I can process 14 quarts in the same amount of time that it takes to process seven quarts in the water bath.

I have another four or five quarts ready to process, but I didn’t have time for a second canner load. The leftover sauce is in the fridge and will get added to the next batch. When I get the sauce done, I’ll start on the salsa. That’s a much bigger job.

I have an experiment to add to the sewing queue for later this fall. Some years ago, I bought this padfolio that holds a yellow lined notepad. I’ve used it to the point that the outer cover is disintegrating. While I was waiting for the tomatoes to cook down yesterday, I took the seam ripper to it:

I’m going to try to rebuild it with a new cover. I may be able to salvage the inside pieces. We’ll see.

I’m motivated to get all the canning done so I can move on to sewing. The transition from summer to fall/winter seems so much easier than the transition from winter to spring.

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We have a craft co-op meeting today because our big sale is in two weeks. The sale gets bigger and better every year. This is such a talented group of women. I’ve seen some of what will be in the sale—we have show and tell on Thursdays—but everything looks even better when it’s together and on display.

I’m also going to interview one of our craft co-op members this morning for the podcast. I think the story of how the co-op began and how it has grown is fascinating.

I’ve got an appointment with the chiropractor first thing this morning. The exercises definitely are helping. And I have a visit with my naturopath at the beginning of next week. I’ll be happy to tell him that I have no current complaints. 😊

A Fall Drive and Some Fabric

We took the pigs to the processor yesterday. For once, the entire process went smoothly. The husband was able to load the pigs by himself, it wasn’t snowing or 90 degrees, and the processor was ready and waiting for us to unload them at the other end. We’re using a processor we found after last year’s pig debacle and we like them very much. The only drawback is that they are two hours away. It was a beautiful fall day in Montana, though, and we enjoyed the drive. We even saw a moose. 🫎

After we got back and ate lunch, I went into town to run errands. Mood Fabrics had a 20% off Labor Day sale and I took advantage of the opportunity to buy the fabric for my coat class in October. I bought some of this luscious wool and cashmere coating in a lovely saturated green:

UPS delivered the fabric yesterday, so I dropped it off at the dry cleaners while I was in town. I also stopped at the quilt store and bought two piecing feet for my Bernina 880 because Bernina is running a “buy one, get one half off” special on feet and accessories this month. I like the piecing foot that has the guide on the side, but it’s not good for sewing half-square triangles, so I got the regular quarter-inch foot as well.

I ordered the acrylic insert for my sewing table last week. I’ve been sewing with the extended table that came with the 880, but the setup is clunky and I’d rather have a true flatbed. I can’t use the diagonal seam tape with the extended table and I rely on that when I’m making half-square triangles.

Can you tell I am making a lot of half-square triangles right now? I’m working on the baby quilt.

My friend Marcie texted me while I was in town and asked if I wanted some corn. I planted corn, but not much, so I stopped at her house on the way home and was gifted a bag. I will work on getting that into the freezer today while the first batch of tomato sauce is cooking down.

Rain and cooler temps move in for the next couple of days. I’m going to make a pass through the tomato patch this morning and bring in what’s ripe (or turning red). I’ve started pulling bean plants and putting them in the greenhouse. I’ll shell those beans here and there as I have time. I don’t see anything near frost temperatures in the forecast, so I am hoping the pumpkins and other squash will still have time to ripen. They are getting close.

The Necchi BV is Sewing Again

I am so happy to see a mostly empty week on my desk planner this week. I slept for almost 10 hours last night. Clearly, I needed it.

A very welcome package was waiting for me when I got home from the pie social Saturday, but I was too tired to do anything except open it. The package contained the old, broken tension stud for my Necchi BV along with a brand-new one. I think I mentioned that I stopped at a machine shop in Spokane last month on my way to Seattle and left the broken stud with a machinist who thought he could replicate it. He did, perfectly!

Yesterday morning, before church, I put the tension assembly back together and fit it into the machine. The stud is that center piece with the thumb screw on it.

I had just enough time to do a quick test sew to confirm that the machine was working properly. The machinist had asked me to let him know if it worked, so I texted him the photo and let him know how pleased I was to have the machine up and running again.

After lunch, I gave Guido—that’s his name—a spa day. This machine is in a treadle base, so I made a new belt, oiled the machine thoroughly, wiped the dust off, installed a new needle, and fine-tuned the tension. You can see that there are no numbers on that tension assembly. Most vintage machines are like that. Tension settings are adjusted by feel.

[Also, industrial machines needles have a round shank, unlike domestic machine needles which have a shank with a flat side. Domestic needles can only go into the machine one way—with the flat side to the back or to the right. Positioning industrial needles correctly takes a bit of practice.]

I am beginning to suspect that old tension stud was worn out, which led to it breaking, because I have always had trouble maintaining good tension on this machine. It is making absolutely perfect stitches now with no extra effort from my end. Perhaps that broken tension stud was a blessing in disguise.

The husband said this machine was lucky to find me. A different owner might have given up and sent the machine to the scrap yard. I’ve always said that if the house were burning down, I would figure out a way to rescue this machine and my little Necchi, because I love them both so much.

Machining is a lost art, and one that I hope will be revived. Not everyone should go to college and work in an office. We need people who know how to make things. The husband always says that the only benefit he got from going to college was finding a wife. 😇

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We have a few more days of warm weather before a trough moves in with cooler temps and rain. If I have to, I can bring tomatoes inside to ripen, but I am hoping that we might get nice weather again before the end of the month.

Right now, making a batch of tomato sauce is on the schedule for Wednesday. I might start some of my bag projects, too, now that Guido is operational again.

The Community Celebrates With Pie

I do love our Mountain Brook community. I think it embodies what community is supposed to be—people coming together to make life better for everyone.

This pie social went very smoothly. A crew of five guys showed up at 2 pm to begin setting out tables and chairs. They hoisted three popup canopies and put out the “Event Ahead” signs on the road. Our cooks brought the ingredients to make pulled pork sandwiches and nachos. And we had a steady string of bakers bringing in pies, all kind of pies. This is Sarah, getting the pies ready to serve:

We had more than enough volunteers, divided into two shifts. We try to keep a clicker count of the number of attendees and Sunnie thought we had about 250, which is 100 more than the spring pie social. People stayed around to help clean up and we were done by 8:00 pm. We don’t have a final count of how much money we raised, but I am fairly sure we surpassed donations given at the spring pie social. Our community is very generous. We sold another $300 worth of quilt raffle tickets and raffled off the quilt near the end of the social.

Now I just need to organize everything into a notebook that can be handed off to the next pie social chairman.

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The husband’s main task yesterday was setting up the trailer for transporting the pigs. We don’t have the best setup for getting in and out of our pig pasture, but that’s going to change soon. There is a large water maple in the way. I hate water maples. They don’t have a trunk per se; they have a collection of thin trunks that grow from the base of the tree, and they also have spindly branches that hang down. As far as I am concerned, they are a very large weed. The husband had to trim the large water maple and a smaller one so he could back the trailer up to the gate.

Here he is removing the small water maple:

The husband told me that after the pigs go to the processor, he plans to take out the large water maple and clear that area. He is also adding another gate to the pasture so he can get equipment in and out of there. The next time we raise pigs, it will be much easier to load them into the trailer.

The tomatoes are coming on and I threw about 10 gallon zip bags full into the freezer I defrosted last weekend. I’m going to try to stay ahead of the curve and start making sauce this week—and hopefully get to do some sewing. The weather is supposed to cool down mid-week. I might get out the bin of sweater knits.

Serger Showcase

The quilt store where I teach is a Bernina dealer. Dealers are required to host “events” at least once a year—a serger event, an embroidery event, etc. These events often are taught by Bernina educators, although I have taught a serger event in the past. Bernina comes up with the project and makes the kits available. These events are a great way for potential buyers to try out machines and for existing owners to get more comfortable with their machines.

For this year’s serger event, the store brought in Kathy Shalda, a Bernina educator from Texas. I didn’t want to take space in front of a machine that could have been used by a student but I did want to participate, so I offered to come and help as a second set of hands. I worked in the background to make sure the irons were hot, troubleshoot machine issues, and do whatever else was needed to help smooth the way for Kathy to teach the class. Our store was the first one in the US to host this season’s serger event. The first time a teacher teaches a class to a group of real students is absolutely nervewracking. We had a few hiccups, but by the end of the class, almost everyone had completed a tool caddy:

I also received a kit and will put together my tool caddy when I have a moment to sew.

Tera was in the class and wore a denim jacket with a beautiful motif she embroidered on the back:

I had a great time at the serger event. I wish I could help at the second session today (and so does Kathy), but I am committed to running the pie social. This is part of what frustrates me about my schedule—the tail ends up wagging the dog instead of the other way around. I may have committed to organizing and chairing this pie social, but I am also committed to handing pie social responsibilities off to someone else to manage in the future now that the event is organized and everything is written down. (Imagine an event without enough volunteers and with all of the information about how to make it happen riding around inside one person’s head. That has been the pie social up to this point.) Sewing is my business and I need to prioritize that before other activities.

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I visited my chiropractor on Thursday. I haven’t been since 2019 because I haven’t had any issues, but I probably should have gotten in earlier this summer. My right hip and right knee have been bothering me, not badly enough to interfere with my daily activities but causing enough discomfort to be noticeable. The massages have helped, but I needed further care.

The good news is that I don’t have any structural issues. I have no arthritis or degenerative problems. The problem is muscle weakness in the back of my leg that is causing the muscles in the front to shorten and pull my hip joint slightly out of place. The chiropractor gave me some exercises to do to help stretch and strengthen the affected muscles. I think that once I get the hip issue straightened out, the knee issue will resolve as well.

I really like my chiropractor. He is in the same office as my naturopath.

The I Spy quilt top is done; I put a border on it and now it’s ready for basting and quilting. I cut the baby quilt on Thursday afternoon. That one is going to be a simple half-square triangle pattern. Right now, HSTs are about all I can manage. I will be very happy when this weekend is over and the pie social is behind me.

My Podcast Guests are the Best

This month is National Sewing Month, but it’s also the month for Project Dress a Girl, which makes and donates dresses for infants and young girls living in poverty around the world. Project Dress a Girl was the brainchild of sewist and designer Mari de Jesus, who owns Inspired Leather, a company making leather hats, bags, and other items. Mari graciously accommodated my request for an interview during what is a busy month for her. Our conversation will air as part of next Tuesday’s episode.

Before I press the record button for an interview, I like to visit with my guests to get a sense of who they are. I also let them know the planned trajectory of the interview. In talking with Mari, I discovered she grew up in Ohio, so I asked where. She said, “A town west of Cleveland”—which is how I describe where I grew up to people who ask—so I pressed a bit more and discovered that she grew up in Lorain. I told her I grew up in Avon, a few miles away, and asked if she had gone to Clearview High School, my parents’ alma mater. She had gone to another Lorain high school, Southview, but it was fun to discover that we were from the same area.

Please visit the website for PDAG and consider making a dress or two to donate. I am going to look through my stash for something fun and make at least one dress this month. The website also has a calendar listing all the PDAG events and YouTube sewists who are participating.

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The husband forgot his phone at home yesterday. I told him I would bring it to him after Susan and I spray-painted “MBHF” on the backs of all the new metal folding chairs purchased recently by the homestead foundation. We’ll be using them at the pie social this weekend. The two of us worked together—supervised by her younger grandson—and got them painted in about an hour.

I have always joked about my “husband radar” because ever since we started dating, I have been able to locate the husband with the vaguest of directions. That is a skill that has come in very handy when needing to visit him on a jobsite.

Yesterday, my husband radar failed me, but it was Flathead County’s fault, not mine. The husband is putting in a foundation on the west side of Flathead Lake. He gave me the address and said “This is hard to find, so put it in your GPS.” I followed the directions, which led me to the named road, but there was no number 817. The numbers started in the 600s. Baffled, I drove around a bit. I could see where the guys were working but not how to get there. I managed to find a closer road—not the one I was supposed to be on—but still couldn’t figure out how to get to the jobsite. In addition, I was on a gravel road that dropped sharply down to the lake and I wasn’t about to go driving into a place where I might get stuck.

I called one of our employees, who alerted the husband, who walked up to where I was parked. He showed me how to get to the jobsite. Flathead County really needs to fix this problem. This road has the same name as the road I was initially led to by GPS, but it’s a completely separate road a quarter of a mile further south with no road sign, and it juts off a road with yet another name. EMS is going to have a difficult time finding someone there who calls for help.

I handed off the phone and went on my way.

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I called our friend Smokey yesterday. He lives around the corner and stops by occasionally to chat and buy eggs from us. I haven’t seen him in a while—I was traveling and he doesn’t believe in the concept of retirement—but he lets us use his stock trailer to transport the pigs. We thank him with bacon. I wasn’t sure he knew that the pigs were supposed to go in next week, so I called to double-check that we could use the trailer. He laughed and said, “Yes, I talked to your husband last weekend when he was out working in the yard,” and I said, “Well, you know that he and I don’t actually communicate with each other.” But better to duplicate our efforts than drop the ball. I called the processor earlier in the week to make sure we were still on the schedule.

Getting Things Done Takes Some Effort

I got out of bed yesterday morning at 4 am, came downstairs, made myself a cup of coffee—morning coffee is an important ritual for me—then sat down at my computer and went to work. Here are all the things I did before the husband came down for breakfast at 6 am:

• Finished the show notes for the podcast, making sure that all the links to items mentioned in the podcast were included.

• Added the intro and outro music to this week’s podcast, exported it as an .mp3 file, then uploaded it to Buzzsprout, where I host my episodes. Wrote the episode summary.

• Finished the episode page on the website (audio file, show notes, RSS feed, and social media links).

• Set up a Zoom meeting link for our homestead foundation fundraising committee meeting that was scheduled for last evening.

• Updated the agenda for the meeting and emailed it to the members along with the Zoom link.

• Emailed three potential podcast guests about scheduling interview times.

• Emailed the duty roster and notes for this weekend’s pie social to all the volunteers.

• Reviewed my notes for a Zoom meeting that was scheduled for 10 am yesterday morning.

• Made a list for my afternoon Costco run.

• Wrote a blog post.

I note all of this not to brag—well, maybe a little—but to help explain my impatience with people who say they don’t have enough time. I could have spent those two hours doom scrolling but I didn’t. I spent about 15 minutes checking social media and moved on.

I said to the husband over breakfast that I was double-booked on Thursday night because everyone wants Janet to be in charge of their projects and events. (I fixed the double-booking issue.) Everyone also believes that they are entitled to unlimited amounts of Janet’s time and energy. I have had to make a concerted effort this week to hold the line on boundaries and remind people that I am not the full-time staff person for their beloved projects. This is also why I hate being micromanaged. No one else on earth can do a better job of managing my time than I can.

More and more, I see a tendency for people to find some organized person and latch onto them, hoping that the organized person will solve all of life’s daily problems. I can’t be that person. There is not enough of me to go around. Twice now, in the past month, I’ve been looped into situations that aren’t anywhere near my wheelhouse. The husband says that people do that hoping that I will just provide the solution.

Yes, I get a lot done. Other people could get a lot done, too. It takes organization and discipline. Those skills can be learned. Maybe it’s because I almost died (twice). I don’t have a lot of patience for people who can’t seem to value the time they’ve been given.

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About six months ago, I broke the tension stud on my beloved Necchi industrial sewing machine. (We shall see if Sunnie’s theory is correct that the word “stud” got my post removed from Facebook last time.) I have missed that machine. It fills the niche between my domestic machine and the Juki 1541. I took the broken stud to a machine shop here in town but the guy there didn’t think he could reproduce it. (Or he didn’t want to try, which is fair.) I contacted a machine shop in Spokane and sent pictures of the broken stud, and the machinist there said he thought he could make me a new one.

I stopped on my way to Seattle last month to visit with him and drop off the part. He sent me a text last night letting me know that the new part is ready:

I’m sending off a check this morning and he is going to ship the part to me.

While I was waiting to start my Zoom fundraising committee meeting last night, the husband put on this video for us to watch (my mother will appreciate this):

This is the workshop of a gentleman who died recently. His widow contacted an estate auction company to come in and dispose of all his machining tools. The amount of stuff he collected over the years is mind blowing. I said to the husband that I wonder if he was collecting all of this stuff just to keep it from ending up as scrap. That’s how I got a garage full of sewing machines. 🧐