Barking Mad!

Now that we are in an area that rains we have tree frogs.  They are everywhere and I'm in heaven.  I love frogs!  Just about every night this week we've had a visitor to our pool, which is still not up and running yet.  It's a barking tree frog.  A liitle different looking from the ones I grew up with in the deep south but a barker none the less.  And of course those of you who know me personally, know I'm going to go pick it up and take pictures right? < insert maniacal giggling here>

Now here's the point of this post, and a funny story.  Well other than I finally live in a place where I can catch frogs again.  This little frog started barking the other night.  The dogs went nuts trying to find the perpetrator of the noise since they had never encountered a barking frog before there's no telling what was going through their minds.  Barking frantically back at it.  Running all over the yard, up and down the fences until one of them found it.  He just stood there and barked right back at it for a good 5 minutes.  Frog, Gus, Frog, Gus, Frog Gus....  We finally had to make him leave the poor thing alone but not before laughing our butts off.  Every night since has started with the frog climbing up on the pool ledge and barking at dusk followed by the dogs, all of them, egging it on for as long as we let them.

Cherries anyone?

I found a really good deal on cherries the other day in the store.  $1.99 a pound, out here that's cheep since they are normally $4 a pound and up.  So I bought 3 of those useless zippered produce bags full.  Landed 6.5 pounds.  What to do, what to do, what to do?  Had no idea, but hubby offered to eat all of them right then and there.  Pulled out the canning books and nothing appealed to me so I just decided to put them in syrup and be done with it.  Yes I saved out a handful for hubby but the rest went into the jars!

Canned cherries
6 pounds cherries (or a little more)
6 cups water
3 cups sugar

First you might want to pit the cherries.  Or not, decision is totally up to you, just be sure to label them as unpitted if you don't.  Wouldn't want any dental injuries in the middle of a midnight snack would we?  For me, well I have this mid-evil looking contraption that was given to me a few years ago and it was claimed to be a pitter but, well, I have no idea how rolling cherries down across a ribbed wheel would work without loosing a lot of juice so I opted to poke them out with a heavy duty chopstick.  Just hold the cherry and push it through the stem end.  Takes a few tries to get it perfect and you'll get lovely stained hand for your effort.
Heat up water and sugar to boiling.  Pack jars to half inch head space.  Ladle syrup over them to half inch head space, make sure there are no bubbles and lid up.  Boiling water bath 20 minutes for pints.
Landed myself 11 pints:

Pickled Cantaloupe, The Rematch

So, remember that pickled cantaloupe recipe I shared last year? This one?  Yeah, well it didn't get rave reviews, was actually called disgusting by one person (though hubby likes them, go figure) and the original link to the recipe is no longer working.  But I shall persevere!  I will try it again!  I will make it edible!
And I did.  We found a little farmer's market and landed ourselves 2 very large muskmelons.  Hubby started eating on one but ran out of steam before he could finish it so I figured they'd be worth the experiment.  I pulled out my Ball Complete book, love this thing, you need one, really, and found a recipe.  It's on page 299.  But I didn't have the whole spices it required so I tweaked it a bit:

Pickled Cantaloupe
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground allspice
3 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
13 cups cubed cantaloupe (peel and seed it first!)
41/2 cups sugar

Combine spices, water and vinegar, bring to a boil for 5 minutes, remove from heat.  Stir in melon and let sit for about half an hour, covered please.
Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally and keep at a light boil for 45 minutes or until the cantaloupe starts looking 'translucent'.  Ladle/pack melon and syrup into jars with 1/2" headspace, work out bubbles and water bath 20 minutes.

I ended up with 8 pints, but I used a little more melon than the recipe called for.

Leaving Texas

Well.  It finally happened.  That move I mentioned a while back.  It took 7 months, a lot of angst, rebuilding a credit score and in general a lot of aggravation.  But it's done.  I've now moved across country to the eastern seaboard where it rains.  I've been here 3 weeks now.  I finally got internet connection as well.  So I must let you know what I had to leave behind in Texas.
First and foremost I had to leave friends.  More friends than I've ever had in my life.  I couldn't bring them with me.  Some of them close enough to be surrogate parents, one of those women I would have forcefully packed in the car with me the day I left had I had room to stick her in there with all the critters.  Friends that mostly accepted me for me.  Which is a huge deal in Texas, I'm not 'normal' out there, though I'd probably fit in really well with those folks in Austin.
I had to leave one of the oldest quilting clubs in Texas.  We were 12 members ranging from 35 to 90+.  We only met once a week but we did beautiful hand quilting.  I don't get to take quilt show trips with them anymore and have one member exclaim in the middle of a parking lot that the pie she just had was better that sex.  Or spend and entire day quilt shop hoping.  Or a day thrift store hoping with a few of the ladies.
I lost a very dear pet right before the move.  My 100 pound puppy, Tesla.  She was my first dog once we moved there and had a yard.  4 years was not long enough and I still tear up when I see a black great dane on TV or any huge black dog.  Though I didn't completely leave her behind, I brought her urn with me.
I had to leave the food.  Which in all honesty was perfectly fine with me since I couldn't eat out due to being allergic to peppers and tomatoes.
I had to leave the heat.  Well no, I didn't get to leave it there, it followed me here.  It was 103* the afternoon we left and 4 days later it was 104* here.
I had to leave the lack of rain, gladly I tell you, gladly.  It's rained more here in 3 weeks than it did in the last 10 months there.
I had to leave my first house there.  It was small.  The carpet was old.  The kitchen was minuscule but it was MINE.  I had so many plans for it.  Now though I have a bigger house, with acreage, 2 sheds and a massive shop.  Time to start over.
I had to leave my peach trees.  Hoping to start planting fruit trees here very soon (well as soon as I can find any for sale!).
I would like to say I left the drive to town but well I'm further out in the sticks now than I was there.

All in all I left a piece of myself there.  That's never happened before.  Texas somehow has a way of getting under your skin and taking root.

So I'm mostly settled in.  Once the produce starts coming my way again I'll go right back to canning and post my progress.  Along with a few projects I need to get done for the place, maybe some ideas on what to do with all the stuff already in the pantry, who knows what else.

So what have you done productive so far this year?

Well, I have been cleaning house, making repairs, AND I canned a few things. 
On New Years Day I botched a recipe for cranberries.  I started out on one page of my Ball Compete Book and my helper (his name is Jefferson, he did a drive by tailing of the book while it was on the counter behind me) decided I needed to change to the page before to finish the recipe... I didn't notice this until AFTER I put the jars in the water bath.  So instead of 'whole cranberry sauce' I made whole cranberry jelly.  Either way it's still good, 6 pints and 3 half pints:

And today I attacked cauliflower.  2 heads, on sale this time of year out here, just couldn't pass them up so I set off to do something interesting with them and landed back at the recipe for the pickled brussel sprouts which is basically garlic dill pickles.  This time though I didn't add the pepper at all since I'll probably be eating them at some point.  Then, right as I was finishing the last jar of cauliflower and realizing I had a lot of pickle left, I decided to make a jar or two of carrots/zucchini/onions.  Just for something different.  Ended up with 5 quarts of dilled cauliflower and 2 quarts of dilled veggies:

A Chicken Story

So how was your Sunday?  Mine was a little hairy to be honest.  Want to hear a story?

I stepped out yesterday morning to go check my chickens and give them their morning treat.  I get to the pen and everyone comes running for the cup of milo I have in my hand.  Everyone but Neo that is, at first anyway.  Once I get a handful on the ground she comes flying out of the coop to hide behind me with my randy little silkie rooster right behind her.  Junior met the bottom of my shoe.  He's 7 months old, just really feeling those hormones kick in and she's been sole the object of his desire.
I look down and see red, literally, her back was nothing but blood.  Junior must have really been feeling those hormones to mate her to that extent of damage.  I toss the milo, scoop up Neo and refrain from starting chicken soup a la Junior.  Once I get her in I find the damage is more extensive than I first thought.  My first instinct was to cull her right then and there.  But..............
Neo is one of our favorites.  She was the lone chick to hatch out of a horrible incubator accident.  She hatched with her umbilical area not quite closed and got to wear a bandaid for 2 days.  She quickly became a people chicken.  She never screamed inconsolably because she didn't have hatch mates.  If it were up to her she'd be a house chicken happily.
So I decide to at least try.  If I couldn't help her I'd put her down.  She got a shower to clean away the blood and dirt and nastiness. She was not patient with this whole process either.  I got her coated with antibiotics and set her up in an infirmary crate in the living room.  Complete with fresh water, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, feed and a few other treats.
She stood there for at least 2 hours before diving into the eggs, once they were gone she perked up and decided to make a mess.  She dumped the water out.  This earned her loose chicken time in the kitchen while I cleaned out her crate where she generally had the run of everything and tried to sit with the cats.  I didn't have the camera handy either!
This morning I get up to find she has dumped her water again.  It's a ploy I tell you, she wants out of the crate.  She then proceeds to throw a fit when she sees me getting a scoop of milo ready for the birds outside and tosses her feed all over the crate as well.  If she's feeling well enough to do that she can wait for a bit while I feed everything else.
Once I get ready to address her needs for the day she is beyond mad.  This from a bird I was ready to cull less than 24 hours ago.  I let her out in the kitchen with a little pile of milo and cat kibble.  She was just so happy to have the milo all to herself that she stayed put while I clean up, get more antibiotics on her and get the crate ready to go again.  I get that done and she proceeds to go straight in, ignore the little nest box I picked out just for her and starts scratching around in the back corner:

Nest ready and set up she decides to come back out and play with the natives, meets Sumi on the way out:

Being the diva that she is she ignores the nice clean fresh water (which now has bailing wire holding it in place) and goes straight for the cat dish, which looks like it needs to be scoured yet again:

She decides the carpet is better for scratching and takes off for places unknown:

After a bit of chase the chicken, Neo is once again secured in the kitchen and of course this is unacceptable so she throws yet another fit and corners Timothy just for the shear meanness of it, all Jefferson can do is try to figure out how to remove the bedding chips from the water dish:

"A baby gate?  Seriously?  Just what do you think I am anyway?"

Jefferson on the other hand has located her nice comfy crate and decided to make himself home in her very well constructed nest.  Neo was NOT having any of that:

After a good scolding she chases him right out of the kitchen:

And then decides it's time to go try and lay an egg:

She's been in there now for a few hours, scratching the heck out of that one corner, trying to make it just right for laying an egg.  She turns into a squawking semi-broody hen every time any of the cats walk by.

I think she'll be just fine.  She's acting like nothing has happened.  Her wounds look good, already closed in the worst places, no sign of infection.  So for the duration of her healing, I have a chicken in my kitchen.

2 years ago today Kelvin came home

2 years ago today I brought home a skinny old man. He stank of too many things to count and had poo crusted over his backside. He weighed 34 pounds. He had been dumped at a kill shelter and no one else offered to pull an old geezer. Even the staff didn't think he'd make it through the neuter.

We couldn't bring ourselves to adopt him back out, even with all the rescues we had at the time. Something about him made us keep him.
He's gained his weight back. He now weighs close to 60 pounds. He was diagnosed with CRF and given 6 to 8 months in February of 2009. I think we kicked that time line out the window for a while. He still hasn't fit in completely with the herd here, mostly prefering to keep to himself though occasionally playing with our dane mix Tesla. He would rather spend his time on his bed or on the couch with the cats. He's a crotchety old man. Doesn't like change. Doesn't like me to leave for too long. Panics if I don't get him his hush puppies on fish Fridays from the gas station, he can smell them even 8 blocks over and gets all excited as soon as a whiff of catfish reaches us. I have to take him up there for them, he sits in the truck and drools down the side of the door until I bring 3 of them out. That's all he gets, 3, and he's ready to go home.

But now, he doesn't feel so good. We've been adjusting his protein intake and meds, trying to make it better but he's slowly starting to go down hill. We'll have another blood test in the next few weeks to know if anything has helped. Until then we are taking it one day at a time not acknowledging the affects CRF has had on him here recently. Not the strange change in tone of his bark from a wonderful basset bark to a screech. Or the ammonia breath that keeps getting worse. Or the fur loss. Or the days he has trouble eating. Or the overall lack of energy.

We gave him at least 2 years he wouldn't have had. 2 years of cats and couches and treats and beds and baths. We are hoping for good news with the next batch of tests. Or at least better news than what we've been prepared for.

Fixing Loose Ends

Nothing is quite like having to sort through your junk to make you want to tie up loose ends and finish all those unfinished projects.  I found one the other day that has been 4 years in the making. 
You see, in June of 2006 I got a chance to go to the big bead show in Milwaukee.  I spent way too much and found a ton of cool things but one, or 2 actually, stood out in my mind.  The first was a really neat clasp made by Qui, a company apparently no longer in business as I can't find them on the net anywhere now.  It wasn't a cheap clasp either and it's silver.  Then there were these black agate dragon beads in a stretchy bracelet I found in a bin at the Rings and Things booth.  I put them away for a move and forgot about them until a year or so ago.  I had taken them out, an idea hit me, I pulled all the components out and placed them together in a tray and promptly forgot about them again.
While I was cleaning up for this next move I found them again and tonight, well, I decided to finish the project.
Behold....... the bracelet it took over 4 years to make:

And I made it just the right size for my wrist, my skinny, abnormally thin sized wrist, so it's not going to be put up for sale ;)

Yep, I pulled the canner back out.

So this move is deciding to take its time, keeping me in limbo and afraid to do anything.  Yesterday I decided to go ahead and can something anyway.  Namely because I was given some pears and really couldn't see letting them go to waste (yes, it's still warm enough here for pears!).  I also had gotten a good deal on a large thing of pomegranate juice.  Then there was all the last peppers from the garden that needed to be put up.....  Well you get the idea.

First up is the pepper relish, there is no set recipe for this but I did write down what I did last year:

Pepper relish

2 medium onions, copped fine in the processor and dumped in the big bowl
4 medium carrots, done the same way
I think I had 30 jalepenos and 50 habaneros, not sure but chopped up the same and tossed in the bowl
2 tbsp dried basil
2 tbsp dried oregano
3 tbsp fresh garlic
4 dried tsen-tein chillies
4 dried cayenne peppers
Buzz the last 5 things in the processor with about a cup of apple cider vinegar until the dried chillies look like red pepper flakes and dump in the bowl, add 2 tsp salt and stir together.  Add more apple cider vinegar if needed and let marinate over night in the fridge. Next morning heat the mix, boil for 5 minutes and pack into jars adding apple cider vinegar if needed.  Process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.

This year I only had jalapenos and dried new mexico chilies and I decided to let it marinate for a few days.  I landed 9 pints:

 

Then there was the pears....  about half were a bit more soft than I like for canning in chunks so I made juice.  Then I combined with the pomegranate juice, it was almost 50/50.  Then I made jelly.
4.5 cups juice (pomegranate and pear)
3 cups sugar
1 pkg no sugar needed pectin

Bring juice to a boil, add pectin, boil 1 minute, add sugar, boil 3 minutes, ladle into jars and process in water bath for 10 minutes.

I ended up with 10-12 ounce jars, 4-6 ounce jars and 7 half pint jars:

Today I've processed 6 pints of pears that were given to me last night.  They were just peeled/cored and chunked up with a light syrup, no picture as they are still in the water bath.  And I found a bunch of tomatoes in the scratch and dent cart for dirt cheap.  Made 9 quarts of chopped tomatoes.

Now back to the sewing portion of this long wait to get moved.............

Open Season

It's that time again.  Opening day of hunting season.  The little town I live in has been gearing up for it all week.  Cars, RV's, trucks, vans, off road vehicles coming in from sates all over, proudly displaying their gun racks fully loaded with rifles.  Locals everywhere signing up for the Big Buck Contest, paying through the nose for hunting licenses, and setting their kids up with cool gear for their very first hunts. 
It's a right of passage here in Central Texas and this little county is the hunting mecca, or so I've been told.  Hotels, all 2 of them, are full.  Restaurants are busy and the stores, all what, 5 of them are bustling.  The county population has practically quadrupled.
Not that I mind or anything.  I'd be willing to go hunting if I had someplace to put a whole deer or 3 or whatever my limit is.  It's just, well, I FORGOT it was Opening Day Saturday when I ventured out mid-morning today wearing my tie-dye frog jacket.  Boy did I stick out like a sore thumb in a sea of camo or what?  Hunters bringing in their morning kills to the forestry service's Deer Check Point near the dollar store gave me odd looks.  I was even asked if I was afraid I'd be mistaken for a deer.
So with the town full to nearly capacity and me not wanting to cause blindness in the hunters while they had their lunch I came back home and started laundry.  Well, what else does one do on Opening Day if not hunting and drinking?
I also finished up the 2 quilts I had sent out to be quilted, I mentioned them here. 
The first one up was started 2007 I think, I finally put the thing together in 2009 and put it away until I could find fabric I liked for a backing.  Here's the final product from a Slash a Stash pattern given to me back in 2007:

And that backing I finally found, a really interesting Batik.  The lady who did the long arm quilting, Heart of Texas Quilting, tried out a Santa theme in the quilting, you might be able to catch a hint of it on the back:

Now the other one, the one where nothing was matching per-say?  Well, get ready, it's a bit different.....

See?  Like I said, it doesn't all go together but it works.  At least for me it does, and I'm not the type of person to care if my socks match.  And the backing:

I also started work on another tablecloth, sort of an odd take on a kaleidoscope pattern.  But you'll have to wait until later to see it.

Mills County Quilt Show

So yesterday I take a break from sorting, and go to a quilt show that I've actually entered a quilt in.  It's the kitten quilt a few posts back, entered into the wall hanging division.  I'll tell you how I did later in the post.
Anyway, it's a long drive from nowhere to get to nowhere but several of us from the Voca Quilt Club do this every year.  And many of us place in the divisions we enter.  We always enter hand stitched pieces, since that's what we do the most of and it's a dying art form that is being pushed aside by the big name fabric companies in favor of the faster machine quilting.  Most entries in these shows now are machine pieced.
This was my 4th year attending and my second year entering.  Last year I landed 3rd place (peoples choice voting) behind a first place heavy machine quilted boot and a second place Dick/Jane panel that had been loosely stitched.  My entry was hand appliqued passion flowers and hand stitched, all in batiks.  But that's ok, I at least placed!  And this was the quilt (notice, the first place winner to the right, remember that....)

And a close up if you'd like to see it:

We arrive today and begin to sort through all the entries with our ballots in hand.  The show's theme category this year was "Western".  I finally make it back to the section of wall hangings and there to my surprise, shock and possible horror was my kitten quilt sitting to the right of that same boot from last year..... I about had a heart attack until I saw that it had been entered into the theme category instead of the wall hanging category.  No way was I willing to lose to the boot again this year!
As the votes were being tallied we did our shopping, they had a nice 'general store' section with leftovers and scraps and such from their club/guild members and I landed myself a bunch of pre-cut, pre-marked and in many cases pre-hand sewn pieces and parts, all for $5.  I won a door prize right near the end, 2 patterns, holiday baskets and plaid chickens on log cabin like blocks.

And so, our winnings for this year, one of our group won second in the Western category with red work cowboys and first in the contemporary category with a hand stitched, hand appliqued, quilt!  Another of our group won second place in the contemporary category with a name quilt (Voca quilters names).  As for me..... I placed second this time, loosing first place to a more honorable foe, machine embroidered chickens.  I can handle that, I liked the chickens, they were cool looking for machine work ;)
My quilt if you don't want to go hunting back through the old posts: Curiosity and the Kitten

Changes in the air and lime jelly

So I bet you've been wondering where I've been huh?  What I've canned lately?
Well I have done a few things, I'm working on a gallon batch of sriracha, I put up more candy apple jelly, finished off the watermelon jelly finally and experimented with key lime jelly but......
Life has a way of letting you know you can't get comfortable for too long.  And now it's a cross country move to keep us on our toes.  It's a job for hubby, a real job, with decent pay and benefits and a relocation package.  We can't afford to turn it down.
So, we are trying to get as much done as we can to prep for this little adventure. 

But onto the lime jelly experiment.........

I found a bunch of lime jelly recipes out there but decided to try something a little different since I can't find liquid pectin out here.  Granted I can make some but well..... I was lazy.  So I did this a bit different.  I had 4 pounds of key limes which I juiced and was about to toss the skins when I had an epiphany, I had to get my $2 worth out of those skins!  I tossed them all in a pot and added a couple cups of water and brought it just to a boil, then backed it off to a simmer until the skins started turning dark, about 10 minutes.  The house smelled fabulous!  I strained this and added to the lime juice to make 4.5 cups of lime 'essence'.  Then I proceeded as follows:

4.5 cups lime juice/essence
4 cups sugar
1 packet no sugar needed pectin

Bring lime juice to boil, add pectin, bring back to boil for 1 minute, add sugar and stir it really well (I had trouble with lumps for some reason this time) bring back to boil for 3 minutes, ladle into jars and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.  Landed me 7 half pints and a bit for taste testing.

Just so you know, this stuff is TART and about 10 days on it's still only semi set at room temp, gels nicely in the fridge though.  If you like sweet, I'd add another 2 cups of sugar.  But I like my tart stuff!

Summer in a Jar

When you think of summer, what fruit comes to mind most often?  Usually it's watermelon.  And what do you do when you find yourself with 3 watermelons that are bigger than your corning ware serving platter?  Especially since they would go sour before you could eat all of them?

Two words.  Watermelon Jam/Jelly.

Now don't look at me like that, it's possible, it's good and I have spent all day working on it!  Since this can be called either jam or jelly I'll let you decide what to call it for yourself, but I will tell you how to make it.

First lets start with the melons.  The obvious question is 'how?".  Actually for me there were a few more colorful explicatives added to that when I was researching how to make this stuff because everything I found started with watermelon cubes that had already been deseeded.  So how did they do that?  I certainly can't even fathom so here's what I did.
Hack melon in half, then into quarters, save out a quarter for eating, then slice as far down as you want so that you can get all the melon off the rind.  I took a nice long knife and sliced the melon right off the rind into a bowl, I didn't make them pretty little squares or anything, just sliced the melon off.  Once the melon is done or the bowl is full, whichever comes first, hack at it a bit with the knife then take a potato masher to the hunks.  This gets the juices going.  I then pulled out my stick blender and finished attacking the contents of the bowl on LOW speed, since at least on my little crappy branded one I know that setting won't actually cut up the seeds.  Pour the slush through a colander to catch anything you missed with the masher or stick blender and the seeds.  You can attack this again with the stick blender to further extract more puree.

Continue this until you get through all of the melon meat.  For these 3 (2.75 actually), I'll say medium sized melons, I ended up with a whopping 4 gallons plus of pureed pulp.  Far more than I expected.  Now at this point you can save the rinds for making pickled watermelon rinds but... I have chickens, I like the fresh flavor of the eggs that goes with feeding them something other than straight feed, so they got all the rinds and trust me, there won't be any sign of them out there tomorrow, heck, maybe not even tonight.

So 4+ gallons of watermelon puree.... great googa-mooga.......

Watermelon Jelly/Jam


4 cups pureed watermelon meat, no seeds please
1/4 cup lemon juice, bottled please
1 package no sugar needed pectin
2 cups sugar


Heat watermelon puree and lemon juice to boiling, yes it smells different nothing to flip out over, add pectin and mix in really well.  Return to boil for 1 minute, add sugar, mix in really well, return to boil for 3 minutes.  Ladle into jars, cap, process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.  Makes about 6 half pints, about, you might have some left over for taste testing.  This will take about a day to set from what I understand, we'll see.

With as much as I had waiting on me I doubled the batches, yes I know this is a sin to the canning gods and snobs but I did it anyway.  Otherwise I'd sill be working on them!  I stopped after I ran out of sugar and I still had over a gallon of juice left.  I tossed it in the freezer and will attack it again after I go into town and replenish my stock of sugar and pectin.  So far I have ended up with 23 pints and 15 half pints just from 3 gallons of puree:

A time to sew

I bet you've been wondering what I've been doing this week.  Well..... without much coming in to can at the moment I cleared off the table and pulled out the fabric.
First it was finishing a top that has been sitting around for about a year.  It's now finished and waiting at the longarmer I decided to have quilt it for me.  You'll get pics when its done since it's a larger quilt!  I also started and finished another larger top out of a stack of 6.25" squares I found hiding in my stash.  I have NO clue what I had intended them for, they don't exactly go together but there was 117 of them.  Enough for a quilt with a large set of equally non matching borders.  I actually found enough oddball material in the stash bins to make a backing and it has been sent off to the longarmer.  You'll get to see it when it's done as well.
Should be about a month for both.

I also decided to finish off my sunflower tablecloth that has been sitting around for about a year simply because when I took it to the local quilting thing the day I finished it, it was greeted with a shriek from an occasional member who hates sunflowers more than I hate pink.  I brought it home and put it up, hoping I'd get back to it after her few weeks with us were past but.... I forgot about it until I was cleaning out the closet the other day!
Shame on me.  I had everything ready to go on it though so I pulled it back out, ironed it up and started playing with the ditch stitching foot on my machine.  It didn't come out too bad, I did run out of thread though, had to settle for another variegated blend since what I started with is not made in that size spool anymore.  Which is fine really, you can't tell the difference. 
The batting on this, since I didn't want it fluffy or see through flat, is an old thin white cotton tablecloth I picked up at the thrift store for 50 cents.  I have enough left over for place mats if I want to make them.  It's 50" x 50".

So here it is, covering the laundry pile from view:

Now as for what to do on the weekend...... I landed 3 free watermelons!

Sriracha

Sriracha sauce.  Or otherwise known by the logo picture as "Rooster Sauce".  It's a spicy chili garlic sauce found on the table at most Chinese restaurants.  It's easy to make.  Really!

What you need:

• Jar, whatever size you want, I used a half gallon jar since I planned on making a lot (next time it will be a gallon).  You might want to start with a pint jar.
• Peeled garlic cloves.  Note, if you use a metal utensil to help you peel them, they will turn blue during the vinegar phase of this recipe, it's ok, still edible!
• Dried chili peppers, half serrano and half chili de arbol or dried cayenne (note, I could not find serranos so I used equal portions of dried new mexico chilies, chili de arbol and dried 'asian hot pepper' (according to the package), omitted the habanero)
• 2 habaneros
• White vinegar
• Pickling salt

Fill jar half full with garlic cloves.  Remove stems from chilies and discard but do not dump out seeds.  Add chilies to fill completely full, you may have to cut a few down to fit them in.  Add salt, I used a tbsp for a half gallon but we don't use a lot of salt so thinking a tsp for a pint should be more than enough for most people's tastes.  Slowly add vinegar to the jar, filling the voids and making sure to jiggle any air bubbles loose.  Fill to top of rim, cap with a tight fitting lid and let sit 3 or 4 days.  Check it every once in a while, topping off the vinegar if needed.
Once the chilies have rehydrated fairly decent, pour it all into a blender or food processor and puree away!  Just don't lean too close and inhale the fumes.  If you want it thinner, add more vinegar.
If you've made a small batch pour it back into the jar and just refrigerate it, otherwise pour it into a stock pot and boil for 5 minutes.  Again, avoid inhaling the fumes if you can.  Ladle into jars with about 1/2 inch head space and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
Of course, my jar was actually a half gallon so I got 4 pints: