What I did this weekend instead of tatting

I have been tatting, really I have.  I have finished a test tat doily, am involved in another test tat, and have finished 3 motifs for my veil.  The veil motifs are the only ones I can show at the moment, but because of the very dark color, I need really good sunlight to take the photos, and that has been lacking lately.

This weekend we decided to dig some of the carrots in the garden, The neighbors who garden with us and we decided that too many were getting too big and splitting when it rained, so we were going to dig the bigger ones, well, we ended up digging 3 of the 5 rows.  This was a great year for carrots, not so great for other crops, but carrots did very well.

So, we ended up with 4 big dishpans full.  The neighbor gal took one and I had the other 3. 
A nice little gal came and gave me a hand with the scrubbing saturday, and this is what we ended up with.

Overflowing dish drainer

13qrt mixing bowl

As you can see some of the carrots are very large. 
They were all colors,  White, Yellow, Orange & Purple.  They do taste a bit different, the white and yellow are milder and the purple is slightly different then the orange.  The purple are only skin deep and they will bleed out when you cook it, The center is a very bright yellow green, surrounded by light orange with a purple skin.  The big one you see on the top of the dish drainer is a yellow one.  The white ones usually stayed slimmer, but grew tall out of the ground so they have green tops,  you can see one in the lower left corner of the drainer.  it is actually odd shaped.  It grew is a stair step fashion.  Some of the yellow ones have a bit of green on the top as well, but not as much as the white.

Sunday after church I started slicing, I ended up with this

13qrt bowl

 I filled this, put 7 qrt jars in the canner,  filled it again, then filled the roaster you can see beside it.

I put 5 batches through the canner yesterday.  I took the last ones out at 1 this morning.
This is what my table looked like

14 qrts of plain carrots
36 pints of plain carrots
3 pints of dilled carrots
3 pints of dill pickled carrots

The white lids are the Tattler reusable brand.  They have been showing up in the Fleet Farm stores in the nearby towns, so they aren't just on the internet.  I like them.

A close up of the jars

The look pretty good don't they. 

Well, I am sneaking the time to do this at work.  So gotta run and get back to it.  Have a really great day everyone and please join in Sherry P's TIAS.   Here is Day 1.

I hope to get some tatting done tonight.

Christmas tatting

While I can't show you exactly what I am tatting as many of the recipients read this blog, I can show you a bit about what I am doing.

all threads are size 20,
colors and manufacture are... starting from the top,

Lizabeth Vineyard Harvest
Manuela  Gold
Lizabeth Denim
Flora Blue & White varigated
Manuela(?)  (old no label)
Lizabeth Autumn apple Pie
Lizabeth Fruit Fizz
Lizabeth Pink Cocoa
Manuela   (no label)
Lizabeth Ocean Sunset
Lizabeth Juicy Watermelon
Manuela (no label)

The tatting is a pattern that is available in the book Tatting by Tatsy and you see about 1/3 of what I am making, that is all I will say about that for now.

The shuttle is a Pop-a-Bobbin ~ I love them. they are really great, if you have a chance to get one from Jane Eborall's etsy shop, please do so.  you can keep track of when they are for sale be reading either her blog, or her sister Sally's blog as it is actually Sally's dh  "I'm in the garage" who makes them.

I picked up the little bells at the Nordic Needle in Fargo ND

whatever I am making, I will need to make about 2 doz.

on the home front, we have gotten 2 of the 3 deer we have licenses for so far this fall.
I bbqed the ribs from the doe on friday and half the ribs from the buck on saturday, and on sunday stripped the meat off the bones and this is the result, 5 quarts of meat canned. (on the right below)

The jars on the left are the last of the tomatoes, yellow, red and black krim, so they are multi-hued.
The neighbor brought over his ribs tonight, they are soaking in the cooler with the rest of ours, and will be bbqed tomorrow night.

If you remember, I have blogged previously about the Tattler Reusable canning lids, I have used them for most of my canning this year, both water bath and pressure canner.  So far so good, I have only opened 1 jar of peaches, and they were great.  I didn't have any more failures then I have had with the metal lids, but I have a large supply of the metal lids so have been using them as well.  If you are interested, I would recommend the Tattler lids. They work just as well and in the long run are cheaper then the metal lids.  The only thing I would like, is to be able to buy some of the rings occasionally without having to buy the metal lids with them.  I reuse my rings many times, as you can see, I remove them from the jars for storage, but over time they do rust. 

well, time for bed, it is after midnight.
have a great day tomorrow, whatever you have to do, and hopefully there is some time for tatting.

next day update on lids

This morning the jars of peaches were cooled and I checked the seals.   of the new reusable lids, out of 18 lids 3 did not seal, but I do not consider that all bad, as it is a new product to me, and uses a bit of new technique, mainly backing off the ring 1/4" and then tightening the rings coming out of the canner.

So, I rinsed the lids, rubber rings, and screw bands put them back on the jars, set them in a new canner of barely water, turned on the burner and slowly brought the whole thing to a boil, let it boil for 30 min and then took the jars out, tightened the screw bands and let them set while I went to work.

this evening 2 of the jars were sealed, the 3rd went into the fridge to eat.

now, I used old miracle whip jars, not regular canning jars so that might have something to do with the # of non sealers. Also, after you first put the lids and bands on, you snug the band down, then hold the center of the lid with your index finger, and back the screw band off 1/4" .  I am pretty sure that there were some of the lids that I backed off more then 1/4".  so I am not too unhappy with the lids yet.

this morning I squeezed out the juice from the cooked peach skins that I had left draining overnight in cheesecloth and got about 4 C of juice. put that in the fridge until I got off work this afternoon.  Then I put the peach juice in a pot, added the less then 1 cup of syrup left from canning the peaches yesterday and also added 4 C of apple juice to make up for the missing peach juice and the recipe for Peach Honey in called for 8 C of juice.  brought the juices to a boil and added 4C of sugar.  continued to cook the mix down until the thermometer read 225 F  and ended up with 6 half pint jars of peach/apple honey.  I had thrown in a half of a cinnamon stick for about 15 min during the cooking to give a bit of added flavor but didn't want too much or it would overwhelm the light peach and apple flavors. 

tomorrow morning I will check the little jars to see if they sealed, as I used the reusable regular size lids on them.

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

as I promised, I am posting about the Tattler Reusable Canning lids that I mentioned previously in this post. 

I used them for the first time tonight to can peaches.  I still have the last batch in the canner, but so far, so good. I didn't have any problems with putting them together, or attaching them to the jars.  The only problem I had was tightening them after taking them out of the canner so I didn't burn my fingers.

I have 17 quarts and 8 pints of peaches. I did some of the pints with the familiar metal lids as they are for our neighbor.  I will let you know tomorrow once the jars are cooled, if they all sealed. 

I stumbled across a recipe for Peach Honey at this website  so right now the peach skins are cooking, will be interested to see how this turns out. 

Testing another pattern for Martha Ess, so no tatting to show.

of this and that

whew! it is hot and humid here, and will be all week.  it is 10:30 pm and still 82 degrees and 83% humidity.  this is North Dakota for heaven's sake.  it is only supposed to get down to 77 tonight.  we do not have any air conditioning, unless you count numerous fans.

so no tatting, too hot and humid. I have a test tat to do for someone, so hope things improve

You may have seen the post by Fox at Tat-ology .

I never expected anything in return, but look what came in my mailbox today.

The beads on the left are 2 shades of teal, in the center pink and an assortment of blue seed and bugle beads.  on the right is a bag of findings ~ cabone rings, buttons and other interesting stuff.  below that are 2 threads, both Lizbeth with some very pretty coppery beads.

and she sent one of her lovely tatted motifs.  she has such neat stitches. and her choice of colors is just right. 
 

Thank you Fox.









a couple posts ago, I mentioned that I had ordered some Tattler reusable canning lids.  They came in the mail yesterday.

I knew that reusable canning lids had been available years ago and can't figure out why they are no longer available.

these are modeled on the old ones that I have

here is a scan of both the glass Ball brand and plastic Tattler canning lids.

I have several dozen of the glass lids.

here is a look at a side view of the 2 styles of lids, as you can see, they are very similar except the glass are that much thicker.

This is a look at the differences in the old screw rings for the glass lids and a comparison to the canning rings you can use to can with now.

the old one seems to be made out of zinc and is deeper to accommodate the thickness of the glass.





one of the reasons that I don't use the glass lids, is that I do not have any rubber rings that worked with them, and I only have a very few screw rings.  the Tattler rubber rings will work with the glass lids.  so now I know where to get more rings, but I only have a few of the zinc screw lids.

One more thing I did today.

I went out and picked the wild raspberries.  there are 2 plants out by the grain bins that were started by birds, and they started some plants behind the house too.  the ones behind the house are in the shade, so do not produce as much as the ones by the bins.  we are going to have to look at moving the ones by the bins, they are in the way.  but they do produce a lot of berries.  they are small and purple/black, but oh do they taste good.  Tomorrow, I think I will combine them with sliced nectarines and use them on shortcake.


Hope everyone has good weather and time for lots of tatting the rest of this weekend.

canning lid givaway

for many years I have canned a lot of food.  when all the kids were home, I used to can over 100 qrts of tomatoes every year, lugs of peachs, pears and nectarines.  made pints and pints of jam and vegetables.  One thing I had always wanted was a reusable canning jar lid. 
there is now such a thing available at reusablecanninglids.com 
they sell a plastic and rubber ring lid called a Tattler lid.  The lids are BPA free. And made in the USA!!

and I have found this blog ~ susangodfrey.com that is giving away some of these lids  Go here to her post for a review of these lids and sign up for her giveaway.