Back from Yarn Land

And into my pile of dishes (and apples). But at least the dishes are kind of quiet and don't involve walking miles and miles of NYC. Don't get me wrong, the Yarn Crawl was super-fun (and where I spent my entire weekend). My feet just don't feel terribly happy about it. I have a ton more photos over on flickr but here are a few, just as a representation of my holiday weekend.

And the loot. Hmm. That doesn't look like very much yarn for a yarn crawl. Oh well. I guess it just goes to show that the quilting bug is still in full effect!

Another Garden Post

Anyone who might be there is likely to be tiring of gardening posts, I would guess, but I still have one more to share. Garden season is coming to an end and crafting in front of the fireplace season is about to begin.

In the meantime, one more gardening post.

Tonight I made my first soup of the season! With lovely leeks from the farmer's market and broccoli from my garden (which wasn't very photogenic), I made Molly's Broccoli Soup with Lemon Chive Cream. So good! I even got to use some garlic chives from the same (most helpful to this new-to-gardening-few-vegetables-eater) farmer at the market. I hadn't had the soup since last winter and had forgotten how just good it is. Good way to start soup season!

Must remember to keep the woodchuck out of the garden next year so I can make a whole lot more of this then.

As for the lack of crafting, beyond soup-making, I blame the apples. Which are seemingly never going to end. But, luck of all luck, yesterday this new, wonderful gadget was sent to me by my thoughtful mother. Now I can peel and slice the apples in half the time. And, as an added bonus, my waste bowl was not looking quite so equal to my cookpot (in other words, the peeler keeps me from wasting so much fo the apple). Too bad it doesn't cook them for me too. . .

Dresden Plate Progress

I'm loving loving making this Dresden Plate. I never wanted a full quilt of these but I always loved them and wanted to try one. And it's so much fun! I see now that I'm making pretty slow progress but I think it's just because it won't be there to work on any more once it's finished.

I followed this tutorial, used a border like this doll quilt, and used this quilt as the inspiration for the treatment of the circle in the center (it's done, in my case, by applique of a blue-dot circle and then cutting out a square of the white fabric barely larger than the blue circle, folding it into quarters, cutting a curve out of the corner, and applique-ing the shape on top of the circle). It's not perfect but I like to just chalk that up to "handmade".

All that's left to do is to add solid-blue squares to the corners (I can't seem to find what's left of my solid blue fabric. . .), put on the back (which will be blue-green, rather like the color in that Denyse Schmidt square print there), and then bind it all with the white-with-aqua-dots fabric which is kind of out of focus but toward the top of the photo above. And then quilting. Which will be pretty minimal on this small of a quilt. Sadly. I do enjoy quilting.

Apples Apples

Well. After that post last week in which I mentioned processing a few apples, I put up 3 apple pie fillings (in ziploc quart freezer bags into the freezer) and set aside 4 lbs of apples to use for the apple butter. And then there were only about 8 apples left. So I decided to go back to my friends' farm for a "few" more apples so I'd have enough to make sauce. Yeah. A few. They had other ideas and sent me home not only with my bag completely full (which I'd only filled halfway last time) but also a box that they'd ostensibly filled for themselves but decided that I needed to take with me.

At least it was a lovely weekend, weather-wise, especially after the constant rain of last week.

Not that I'm not happy to have all of the apples (because I feel very lucky to have them). Just feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Especially as I am still without an apple-peeler-corer (we tried to buy one yesterday but the store had run out).

Today I used up about 2/3-rds of that box to make 7 quarts of applesauce (all I did was fill my largest pot with apples, a fair amount of cinnamon, and about 1-2 c. of sugar, heat it on low for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, and then used a canning funnel to put it into 7 quart jars). As for the rest of the apples, I'm begining to run low on ideas. I'm going to do the apple butter and I think an apple-plum chutney from, again, my Small Batch Preserving book. Then maybe 3-4 more pie fillings. Patrick wants some apple leather which, apparently, is just made by baking applesauce spread on a baking pan. That should leave me with about half of the bag to go. Any suggestions?

Pop! There goes one of the applesauce jars. What a satisfying noise!

Encouraged by Potatoes

Who knew that digging potatoes would be fun? It reminded me of the time that my family went digging for diamonds in Arkansas (no one found any) but I could eat what I found in my garden. And anyone who knows me knows how much I love eating potatoes. Plus, as an added bonus, potatoes take practically no effort to grow. No pruning or tieing up or constant worry over bugs, just bury them, add a little more dirt a few times, keep them watered, put up tomato cages, and dust for the obnoxious earwigs once in a while. And look at what came out of that little patch of dirt! I'm estimating that I have 3 pots of Yukon Gold Potato soup from my 4 little seed potatoes that I planted. Next year, I think I'll try growing the potatoes more vertically (although I plan to build wooden boxes rather than using tires) but, for a first try, this year was great!

And, as an added bonus, from under the dying potato plants (I was told that the potatoes would be ready when the plants started to die), I unearthed another lovely butternut squash. I so hope that these guys ripen before the frost hits!


I also have an obscene amount of apples, given to me by a friend who wasn't going to use most of the yield from his trees. These are being peeled, cut, cored (by hand -- I need one of these cool gadgets), mixed with cinammon, sugar, lemon juice, flour (a la Joy of Cooking), put into quart freezer bags, and frozen for wintertime apple pies.

If I can get back to cutting today, I plan also to make apple butter from my favorite canning book.

And, in the meantime, I leave you with a photo of my flower bed and my favorite snapdragon (my favorite flowers in general).

Rainy Afternoon

I'm in an organizing mode today and don't have very good light for photos so I'll just post this one photo of the leaves beginning to turn outside the study window. Have a lovely and cozy afternoon!

What Was Hidden Above the Dropped Ceiling aka Full Stop

Well, as horrible as it was, I guess that the schoolroom dropped ceiling in our kitchen did serve a purpose after all.

First, it covered the never-repaired holes in the plaster from when, apparently, there was a leak in the bathroom above. At least they didn't just plaster over a Dixie cup, as the previous owners of my parents' house had done to "repair" a bathroom leak!

(This second hole photo is of the twin hole inside the tiny bathroom next to the kitchen. The upstairs bath is above both the kitchen and the downstairs bath.)

Next, and quite importantly, it contained all of the flakes of paint that were falling from the ceiling. All of the flakes of most-likely-lead paint. . .

Third, it concealed the ever-pesky tops of the old cabinets.

And, lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it contained all of the wiring for the kitchen. Not just for the monstrously awful fluorescent lights in the kitchen as we'd assumed but also for the cute light above the sink, both light switches, the 3 whole electrical outlets which the kitchen contains, and who knows what else. The porch light and butler's pantry light could even be wired into this mess.

Now we are at a loss about what to do next. We don't want to put the panels back in, as it created a kitchen with approximately 7-foot ceilings but we also do need some electricity in the room.

There's an older junction box that's actually above the plaster (you can kind of make it out in the photo above) which we might just be able to tap into entirely. Although it would likely require that we make more holes in the plaster to hook all of the wiring to it properly.

Also, we have the option of encasing the wiring more efficiently and then putting in a bead board ceiling higher than the dropped-ceiling was. But that seems like just a new band-aid to cover the old band-aid.

Our plumber recommends that we not patch the existing holes until we're finished with remodelling the bathroom upstairs, which could take years. Maybe we should just knock down all of the plaster, do it all right, and live with a construction zone kitchen for however long it takes to fix both the kitchen wiring and the bathroom layout upstairs. We'll probably go with the last option, realistically. But, in the meantime, we just have to ask our guests not to look up when then come into the house (the door in the last photo is the one we use for most coming-and-going -- it's on the street side of the house). Ah, the joys of an old house!