Thursday, August 18, 2016

The End of Summer

The extremely hot weather has finally broken here in Missouri and I am anticipating those wonderful autumn mornings in my future.  I generally get up really early and I love to go out in the wee hours of morning as the birds start singing.  Last week it was humid and you could actually break out into a sweat at 5 am.  Not this week.  We have lows in the 60's and it feels great.

Our garden has been wonderful this year.  We have tomatoes that weigh almost a pound.  I'm not talking about just a few but more than half of what we pick is bread size.  It's a BLT bonanza around here. We did use Epsom Salts three times on them and it made a huge difference.  The extreme heat and regular rain probably helped some too!

For years I have saved pickle juice once we finish a jar and cut up cucumbers to drop in.  Sweet, dill and Bread Butter all work the same.  After a few days in the brine the cucs taste like those great crunchy pickles at the Deli.  This year, instead of making our own pickles, we decided to boil and cool the brine then drop in fresh picked cucumbers and guess what?  It works too!  They are crunchy and good like the Deli pickles.  We haven't tried to actually can them to save for later but so far so good. We hate soft pickles.

My Bear Paws fabric should be in stores by now.  If you can't find a store that offers it, or want to see it up close, I put a few bundles in my Etsy Store at:
I have a couple of Bear Paw patterns almost ready, well, at the quilter anyway. I will post them soon.

I  added some new Instant Download patterns to the Craftsy Store at:

Crafty Cats fabric line will be shipping soon.
Here is the panel that goes with the line.

Here is one of the border prints that I really like- 

I am working on a few new cats patterns.  
I will post a complimentary pattern on the Facebook page when it is ready.