Friday night sewing

Last night I had a bunch of stuff to get ready to mail out:

And I volunteered to make 2 - 12" blocks for a donation quilt to Australia:

And I had to do some blog reading - I am so far behind!

So I finished everything up, boxed up what I needed to send, and this morning Tyler and I will make a run to the post office. Christina, Carol and Tracey - your packages are on their way!

And Judy - I did go to bed around 11:00 - and slept until about 7 - hehehe. That is a short night of sleep for me:) I'm usually the one in bed (on a Friday night no less - how sad!) by 9:30, and I can easily sleep until 8 or so if given 1/2 a chance.....

I've got the housework done (for the most part) and I am off to work on some fun stuff now...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Kris

Bears in the Farmhouse

I joined another Quilt Along - this one with Judy Laquidara - for a design she created for Bears in the Farmhouse. I love this quilt. I've loved it since I first saw her EQ design of it weeks ago.

And the greatest thing is - all the fabrics except the stripe came from my stash.

Which is fast diminishing. I'm not sure about the yellow, and I have more blues and greens that I can pull from my stash once we actually get started cutting.

Tonight was a fun night. Jessie is at a campout at COSI with her girlscout troop, so Todd, Tyler and I went out for pizza. Now I'm going to do a little sewing and call it a night.

Have a Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Kris

Mud

What do you do when it was 70 degrees out yesterday afternoon?

You kick all the boys and girls out into the mud and give them a couple squishy pumpkins to peck at:

You get out the 4 wheeler and yard card (after putting said 4 wheeler into 4 wheel drive so you can get through the yard to get to the chicken coop without making big ruts):

And you proceed to empty out of the chicken coop 3 heaping yardcarts full of ....stuff.

Then you have to keep the chickens out in their run until your husband gets home with the lime and another bag of shavings so you can give the chickens a nice, clean home. Which they will not thank you for - they will in fact be royally ticked at having been locked out of their house for 3 hours!

And here is how Jessie's quilt is coming along. I have the blocks done. I have the sashings and borders all cut. But....with 42 blocks, I need to find a larger place to lay it out to make sure the colors of the blocks all look good together.

And of course, today will be back down into the 40's and rain. But at least it will give me a chance to get inside and get some sewing done!

Kris

Glass Jar Saurkraut

• Remove outer leaves from cabbage - wash, drain and cut into quarters - discard cores
• Shred 5 lbs. of cabbage at a time - should be no thicker than a dime - I shredded mine right into the kitchen sink to mix it up with the salt in the following step.
• sprinkle 3 1/2 Tbsp. salt over cabbage and mix thoroughly
• pack into clean, glass jars, pressing cabbage down firmly - fill to within 1 1/2" - 2" from top - Juice will form with packing; add water to cover cabbage in jar
• wipe off jar top, put on lids, but do not seal tightly
• set filled jars in shallow pan to collect overflow; keep at room temperature for 10 days. Keep cabbage covered with brine (1 1/2 Tbsp. salt - 1 quart water)

To process, clean jar tops; add new lids; process Quart jars in boiling water bath for 30 minutes

A few words to the wise - pack very tightly - I did not pack mine tight enough - after the 10 days, my jars were only 3/4 of the way full. Still tastes the same, but need more.

Your house will reek to high heaven of cabbage/saurkraut smell after day 5. Just warning ya that it will smell - but not in a bad way (but at the same time, I was oh so glad to get to day 10:))

Pork and Saurkraut

Some of you may remember when I first tried making my own saurkraut. We opened our first jar over the weekend.


Oh. My. Gosh.




I have never liked saurkraut (that you buy in the store) at all. In fact, I wouldn't eat the pork that was cooked in the saurkraut. That all changed Saturday night. In fact, I should have opened 2 jars, as the kids could not get enough of it.



And to think, if I am being honest here, the only reason I made it was because our Amish neighbor gave me 7 heads of cabbage for 50 cents a piece, and I couldn't stand to see them go to waste. Guess that will teach me.





And since we had a surplus of eggs - I had to hard boil about 3 dozen eggs. At least the kids think a hard boiled egg is a good snack. Tonight I'm making beet eggs out of the rest.....

Kris

PS - as for the piggies. We have corn that we grew - so I think we are just buying the rest of the ingredients for the feed and are going to mix our own feed. But - they will only need about 6 weeks of finishing so it might be easier to just buy feed. And there is only 2 pigs coming - which shouldn't be too bad.

Weekend Sewing

Here's some of the blocks I made over the weekend:





I've just about got all the blocks finished up - there will be white sashing in between each block, and I'm going to find a way to use the striped fabric in some sort of border (I think). If I use all the blocks that I can make - this sucker will probably be a double bed size - I think I have enough fabric to do 42 blocks (and they will finish at 11" square).

And here is my Valentine's Day table runner. I gave the first one to my Mom (as if I did mine first, I would NEVER get the second one done) and had it all done but for hand sewing the binding down. Well, I worked on bindings while watching President Obama's news conference.

We are starting to plan here - there's lots of gloom and doom out there - and while I don't subscribe to it - we don't want to be caught unaware. So we are ramping up our garden plans and the pigs are coming as soon as we can get them. The pigs are almost finished - another 6 -8 weeks and they will be ready for eating. Fortunately for us, they are runts - our friend who raises them is taking 8 to be processed very shortly, but he is getting 10 more right away and doesn't have room to keep the 2 runts and 10 little ones. I'm just glad I'm going to have good bacon that's not costing me $4 a pound:) And we've got a steer that will be ready for processing here in the next couple of months. While we don't need the meat just yet - we are going to save back a half for us and sell the rest.

It's going to be 50/60 today and tomorrow - and then back in the 20's. But most of the snow is gone, the ice is gone and the snow is off of the roof of the house now.

Have a great day!
Kris

No picture Monday!

The weekend was so busy - but I took LOTS of pictures - and of course, all my rechargeable batteries are now deader than a doornail - I'll have to upload some pictures tonight.

The kids both had friends spend the night Friday night - and that was EXHAUSTING! They were up until 11:30 p.m. and then woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday. It was a sister/brother who spent the night - so that was nice for both kids but they were CRANKY by late Saturday afternoon!

It was a beautiful weekend - 49 on Saturday and 39 yesterday. Today is supposed to be 54! So yesterday I spent all morning cleaning house and then helped Todd outside cleaning out cow sheds, horse stalls and everywhere. Then bedding them up took quite a while. We did work with Jessie's calves. They are getting there and the one she should be able to lead easily by the time the March show rolls around. Now we just need 1 more hard freeze (I know, I shouldn't even be saying that!) so we can spread manure one last time and everything will be clean for spring/summer.

I did get to work on Jessie's new quilt - I have 14 blocks sewn together and another 27 blocks cut out and paired up. It will be so pretty. And I've got all the pieces for Tyler's whirlygiggle's quilt cut out. I think I'm going to do Jessie's quilt top, then Tyler's and then have a quilting stretch to get everything done.

We went to Aldi's on Saturday morning for our grocery run. I only have to go about once every 3 weeks (to buy butter, staples, cheese and the like). And boy - have prices gone UP! What I could get 3 weeks ago for $40 - now cost me $56. Ugh. But, just a few more months and the garden will be on it's way to producing. We are getting a couple pigs here shortly - we have a good friend that raises them, and he has 2 runts that aren't ready with the rest of them that he has (he raises about 10 at a time in their pasture) so we are getting them - we'll finish them off (they weigh about 140-160 right now) and then have our own sausage, bacon and pork chops.

Have a great day! Back later,
Kris