Lynn Carson Harris

Thoughtful Sunday 9

(photo: D and M on Lake Superior, August 2004)

"Are we not, all of us, wand'rers and strangers; and do we not, all of us, travel in danger or voyage uncharted seas?"

A Gathering of Days, Joan W. Blos, 1979

Happy

Things that make me happy today:
1. We live on this road.

2. I drove down the above road to get to M's last cross country meet of the season where he made his season goal of finishing the 5 K race in under 20 minutes. (19:56)

3. P is up and feeling better after a day of and naps and fever on the couch.

4. P. talking with a woman in a reproduction 1860's dress last Sunday. Why does hers STAY out?

Each year we work at "Pioneer Days" at Waterloo Farm Museum I demonstrate tatting and how to make handkerchief dolls. B works the horse drawn wagon ride area, and for the last three years M has played music there with a few friends. It looks like P will be getting a special dress for next year's event. I will try to make one with a deep hem to let out as she grows.

5. P saying in her sleep, "Where is my embroidery?" (she calls these her embroidery)

6. We are having another beautiful sunny fall day today!

Catching Up

I mailed my little mushroom quilt to Finland today.
 
I sort of copied the embroidery design from the cover of one of P's fairy books. B says mine looks a little pear shaped. He doubts that this one would actually be able to fly. A little too much nectar perhaps.

I hand quilted around the embroidery.

Since the quilt does not have owls on it, I included some owl notecards in the package.

I am almost caught up with my sewing list!

Indian Corn

We planted back in the spring and watched it grow all summer.  We worried about it when it didn't rain but there was nothing we could do but wait.

This weekend we harvested. It is slow work. Plant by plant, row by row, we pull the ears off the plant and knock the stalk to the ground. We pile the corn in the back of the pick up and sit on the back porch and pull off the shucks. Then, we are left with all the beautiful ears of corn.

We sort through them and save the biggest and best ears for next years seed. We try to save some of each color.

We sort the pile again and save good looking ears for making corn meal. Will let the ears dry and then shell them and store the kernels until we are ready to make bread. We grind the corn just before we make our Little Red Hen Bread. The rest of the corn is fed to the chickens.

I love looking at all of the different colors on the corn. P has saved two pink ears that she will plant next year. I like the kernels that are striped. The striping only appears in white and red.  The burgundy kernels only are in ears with other burgundy or very dark purple. I find it fascinating.

Corn harvest also means the winding down of the fall food frenzy. Now, we wait for the corn to dry.

Still, we are making apple sauce but we see an end to the food preservation.

Milkweed

When we were small we used empty milkweed pods to make Christmas ornaments.

My father said that in World War II he gathered milkweed fluff from fields near his home.

It was used as the stuffing in life vests.

I want to try to spin milkweed fluff. I hope to some day be THAT caught up.

I am working on some projects and will have some exciting quilting news to share soon.

Thoughtful Sunday 8

(photo: my mother at age 2)

"What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?"

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, 1868

More Circle Fun

I have been having fun with my circle cutters. Here are a few of my latest creations.

Rabbits; faces by Eloise Wilkins:

 

Go Dog, Go by P. D. Eastman

Dr. Seuss

I have also used the larger circle cutter to make gift tags from the book covers.

Spinning Pinwheels

It feels great to finish a project. 

I used the traditional bishop's fan for the quilting pattern. My great grandmother often used this pattern on her utility quilts. My grandmother explained the no marking process to me. They would put the quilt in the frame, and sitting on both sides they would start on the right of their side and quilt an arc as big as the swing of their arm. Then they would quilt parallel arcs inside the first large arc. They would move to the left and repeat the process.  The arc designs would meet in the middle of the quilt. Being left handed I would have had to always work on my own side of the quilt because my arc would go in the opposite direction.

The quilt is for a baby so it is machine quilted to stand up to repeated washings. I also continued the pattern  from  one side to the other while leaving the inner border free of quilting.

I like the mix of new and old, traditional and modern in this quilt.

Food Preservation

Harvest time. Yes. It is good to have lots of food from the garden but this is when it gets a little tiring.  Some foods like the grapes need to be dealt with in a timely manner. We waited a little longer than we should have this year and ended up with sweet juice. Usually we make the juice before all of the grapes are ripe and the under ripe fruit adds a little tartness to the juice. The sweet juice is good though, and we didn't have to add sugar.
It was cold this weekend so we had a pile of basil from our neighbor to deal with Friday evening before the the predicted frost. B made and froze a huge batch of pesto.

We also made another batch of tomato sauce and two batches of of apple sauce. All of this cooking helped heat the house a little. We did have a fire in the wood stove last night so we put the BIG canner on top of that and canned nine jars at once!

P and I have also cooked and frozen about 20 cups of pumpkin. She likes to turn the crank on the ricer.

She also likes to eat pumpkin muffins so it is good she likes to help.

All this work now will make things easier in the winter.  When we are snowed in, we can go to the basement and be able to make a meal from what we have stored. potatoes, onions, garlic, tomato sauce, pesto, applesauce, grape juice,green beans, green peas, strawberry rhubarb pie fillings, peach pie fillings, peach blueberry pie fillings, jam, raspberry jam, pumpkin, blueberries.

We still have a lot more applesauce to make to last the year.

Thoughtful Sunday 7

"If a flower blooms once, it goes on blooming somewhere forever. It blooms on for whoever has seen it blooming."

Sounder, William H. Armstrong, 1969