Pickles !!!

Thanks to my friend, Pat Borders, I have cucumbers and therefore I am making pickles. I made 8 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles over the weekend and 7 pints of dill pickles last night. 7 more pints are in the canner as I write this. These 7 will be mild since I ran out of dill seed and had to use dill weed instead. Actually, I'm not sure how they will turn out. I'm using a different recipe than the one I used before (though similar) and my pickle making skills aren't the best but hopefully they will at least be crisp.

I've started harvesting beans and the garlic is almost ready as are the onions. I also expect to start harvesting corn any day now. I'm going to try some tonight for supper. I've had a few red tomatoes but they were all damages but there are some pink ones out there now, so real soon now.

I've slowly been working on my quilt for the quilt along. I'm cutting the strips into smaller strips and am almost done. I expect to be sewing next week. More details on my Kudzu Kwilts blog along with my problems getting fabric for my GT quilt.

Summer is here ...

And baby is it hot outside.

I've been pretty busy these last few weeks, though I guess it has been months since I last posted.
Here's what I've been up to:

Finished the baby blanket I was crocheting. It look very similar to the one I made year before last for Hannah's baby. I think I did a better job this time as it is mostly square.

Started a quilt-a-long (and a new blog, Kudzu Kwilts). We are making a twin size bed quilt. It will go on the trundle bed in my office.

Harvesting the garden has begun. We got lots of lettuce this spring along with broccoli and cabbage. I have frozen most of the broccoli and the cabbage is in the fridge. Fortunately cabbage keeps a long time. Started with squash and zucchini in the last week or so. We're having better luck, so far, with the squash and zucchini. The vine borers haven't been as bad. I'm trying to be better about spraying and that seems to be helping. I have more than I can handle at the moment. I've put up 5 jars of squash and 5 jars of zucchini the last 2 days and I have more to do today. I've made lots of zucchini bread too. Enough to start giving away.

Lawrence is out of town until Thursday with his sister and BIL. They will be staying here Thursday night. I'm sure I can get them to take some squash and zucchini when they leave to go home Friday.

The babies are here

My niece, Sarah, had her twins Sunday, the 25th. They were 2 months early but healthy. Two girls, Evelyn Ruth and Eileen Frances. Sarah, who lives near Huntsville, AL was visiting in the Mobile, AL area to attend a baby shower when her water broke Sunday morning. Brandon, the Dad didn't quite make it in time to see both babies born but Sarah had other family there so it wasn't a total disaster. It isn't clear at this time, how long the babies will have to stay in the hospital and of course, being out of town won't make it easy but if anyone can handle it, it is Sarah.
However, that means the babies came before I had their gifts ready. I rushed to finish the quilt and here it is:
I'm not real happy with the way the binding went on and don't look too close at the quilting. I should have known better than to try something with curves. But overall, it came out nice. Here is a closeup of the label:

The crochet baby blanket I'm making for her will still take a couple of weeks to finish. I'll send this along with another quilt I made from a kit today and send the blanket later.

Finished the bed quilt

I finally finished the quilt I started in the quilt class I took a Jo-Anns last fall. I had procrastinated finishing it because I was afraid that the quilting and binding will be long and tedious but it turns out not to be that hard. The quilting took about a week or so, working a little bit every day. The secret is to take frequent breaks. Hand finishing the binding took 4 evenings and is easily done while watching TV. I think it turned out great. I'm very please with it.

Placemats

I want to post the pictures of my second quilt project. I made four placemats from my own pattern. The fabric is some that my friend, Pat Borders, gave to me before Christmas. While it's not fabric I would have chosen it worked great for what I needed it for which was to practice making a quilt from start (coming up with a design) to finish (hand stitching the binding). I mis-calculated a few things and mis-cut a few things but I managed to get it done and it was great practice for my bed quilt. I hope to be posting pictures of that soon. I just have to finish hand stitching the binding and it is going faster than I expected. Yeah. I plan to start on another baby quilt today.

It has finally gotten hot. The garden has needed watering already. Hard to believe that 2 weeks ago we were still complaining about the cold and the rain.

Jolie is going great. With just a few weeks work, I feel that she is almost where we left off last fall.

Lemon Squares

Well, I finished the baby quilt yesterday. All it needed was to sew up the hole used to turn it right side out. So it's done. I then went out and bought the stuff to do another baby quilt and the yarn to crochet a baby quilt. Don't know which I will give to Sarah but I will try and sell the one I don't give to her. Or maybe save it till someone else I know has a kid.

I also made lemon squares last night. Probably a mistake in that it is hard for me to resist eating them. I used quinoa flour instead of regular flour, and stevia instead of sugar for the crust. So I can pretend they are a little bit better for me than regular ones. They are good but not as good as some others I've had, I need to find a better recipe to start from than this one.

Today I need to finish Ky's taxes and then go help pick out the winners of the GDCTA grants. After supper I will take Ky back to school so I probably won't get much crafting done today.

I'll post pictures of the finished quilt later.

It's been a long time.

Well, it looks like I'm terrible at blogging. But I'm going to give it another shot.

I have a new hobby, quilting. As if I didn't already have enough. I'm working on about 7 projects right now.

1. Cross stitch. I'm almost done with the last carousel horse for Ky. The 4th of 4 that I started when Ky was a baby. She is now 18 and in college. But I'm finishing up the backstitching now. Soon, real soon now.
2. I quilted a baby blanket for my niece who is having twins this summer. It was from a kit and I just need to sew up the seam. Should only take a few minutes, don't know why I'm delaying.
3. Quilted placemats. All I need to do with them is do the final sewing on the binding. I'm waiting until I finish the cross stitch so I can do it while watching TV.
4. Bed Quilt. I took a class at JoAnn's last October and I've been slowing working on finishing the quilt. I finally quilted the center parts yesterday. I'm not sure how I want to quilt the borders. I need to get an embroidery foot for my sewing machine so I can do a curvy quilt pattern. Then I need to practice on something else to see how it goes. If that doesn't go well then I'll just do some straight lines and a diamond pattern or something similar.
5. I'm braiding a new glasses holder thingy. I made a beaded one a couple of years ago but it keeps getting tangled up so I thought I would try a new way. It is taking longer than I thought.
6. Gardening. It's that time of year again.
7. Riding - I'm still working on the canter. I'm not sure we will ever have a good one.

I still need to make 1 more baby blanket for Sarah. She is having twins so one won't do. I will either crochet on or make another quilt. They will not be identical (neither the blankets or the twins). Hopefully Sarah is ok with that. I also have several crochet projects I want to do.

And I'm back on the diet. I gained about 5+ pounds last year so I've been working to take them off since the first of the year. So far so good, I'm down to 130 (on my scale which weights you in about 10lbs light, so I really weight more like 140).

I guess that's about all for today.