Gardening experimenting

 Way back in the late winter and early spring I was watching a bunch of how-to gardening videos on you-tube. What a rabbit hole that is!! Anyhow, some of them were about planting potatoes in pots rather than garden beds. We have a Kawartha dairy place that does a huge business selling ice cream and they give their empty 3 gallon tubs away for free, so I thought, why not try it. Today is harvesting day. The plant tops are yellow and dying back, which according to all those videos I watched, means that the potatoes are ready. The buckets have been sitting on the upstairs deck all summer where they got lots of sun and lots of rain. Back in the spring I bought a bag of seed potatoes. I think it may have been a 1 kg bag. Anyhow, after all the pots were emptied, this is our results. I weighed them and it came out to 10 pounds. I’d previously emptied a few more buckets which gave us enough for a meal. So our total yield was perhaps 12-15 pounds. Not that great for all the work that went into it. Each bucket was planted with a seed potato with 2 or 3 eyes on it, as recommended in the videos. Out of each bucket we averaged 2-3 good sized potatoes. So we maybe tripled what we planted. It was a fun experiment and fun to watch the plants grow. We didn’t have enough space in the raised beds to do potatoes, so the buckets were the only option. There is talk of building a few more raised beds next spring, so maybe next year we can try them in a garden bed and see if the yield is better. On the very up side, they do taste way better than store bought.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve gotten a little bit more done on my hymn cross stitch piece. I think I would actually have done more on it today, except that the light faded and my temporary seating place while our renovations continue doesn’t have a good lamp. And I’m too lazy to get my lamp and set it up. So daylight stitching it is.

Our local grocery store had a great deal on Roma tomatoes, 25 pounds for $8.99. We picked up 50 pounds. So far all I’ve done with them is wash them, cut the stem ends off and put them into bags into the freezer. I’ll process them into pasta sauce and salsa once we have a functioning kitchen again. In the meantime, they will be fine in the freezer. The tomato plants in our raised beds are just starting to show red on some of the tomatoes, which will get added to the freezer stash. The pasta sauce recipe I used last year was really good and has the added bonus of using 25 pounds of tomatoes at a crack. This is it here.

There isn’t anything else exciting happening here. I’ll sign off and link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching in the morning.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve made a bit more progress on my hymn cross stitch. Last time I wrote I was here.

 I still have the last word which is “tree” to finish on the second line. But I wanted to move my hoop back to the left side of the piece in order to work on the bigger letters.

 I’ll finish that last word on the second line when I move the hoop over to the right again.

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching in the morning.

What we’re working on

 The wedding quilt that our prayers and squares group was working on is finished. We decided to have it quilted by a long armer. It turned out beautifully. We will gift it to the newly weds’ family tomorrow. There is another couple associated with our group getting married, so we have started another wedding quilt. The colours requested for this one are neutrals and burnt orange. We’ve gotten a good start on it. All of the squares with orange around the outside are done.... 49 of them. There are 50 of the squares with the grey around the outside to do. So I think there are 10 or 11 done. Once again, by insisting everyone pay close attention to their 1/4 inch seam, all the blocks are coming together nicely. We will be quilting this one in a quilt as you go fashion in rows.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 My stitching time and quilting time has been in short supply lately. Mostly due to renovations still happening and also grandchild minding, both of which I am truly grateful for, so it is all good. But that means an absence of things to talk about here on the blog. However, yesterday I managed to find my cross stitch stuff and get it all gathered together and take a few stitches in my hymn piece. Last I showed it I was here. 

I put in a few more lengths of threads and got another couple of words done. 

I have the word “tree” left in this line and then I can do a colour change and bigger letters for the next couple of lines. That should make reading the chart a bit easier. The best thing about doing this piece is that the words and the tune are stuck in my head which is most definitely a good thing. And apparently it is World Embroidery Day. Who knew there was such a thing? So I will have to make the attempt to put in at least a few more stitches to acknowledge this.

I’m linking up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’m making good progress on my cross stitch piece. Here’s where I was last week. 

And where I am now. 

This is such a relaxing and enjoyable stitch, with the added bonus of having the hymn in my brain while stitching it. And I didn’t realize until I took this picture that the mottling colour in the fabric and the thread colour for the lettering match. Not bad for matching the colour to an online picture of the thread. 

I’ll link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching in the morning

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I’ve been able to get more slow stitching done this week. Between it being too rainy to be outside or too smokey from the northern fires to be outside, there has been a lot of inside stitching time available. I have the top border of my current piece almost finished.

 

I can get to the beginning of the lettering next. I’m enjoying working on this one. There is enough of a challenge to keep my brain occupied without feeling like my brain is frying. It is all regular cross stitch, no fancy stitches involved. This is what the finished piece will look like. It is a design from a company called My Big Toe.

I’ll link up with Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching in the morning.