Fall vegetables

My tomatoes are finally ripening. I made turkey chili the other day, using tomatoes and baby zucchinni from my washtub garden. It was and continues to be yummy! It made enough that I had to freeze half of it.

It's hard to make out the tomatoes against the V8 juice. Also in there is a pound of browned ground turkey breast, celery, and onion. To be added shortly are black beans, pink beans, chili powder, and much later a splash of vinegar.

Also in vegetable news is this dirty carrot that blogless Louise grew and decided to share with me and, via the internet, you:

Change of Command—oops!—Plan

I *am* reading Elizabeth Moon's Change of Command (again), but that's not what this post is about! My goal for Le Tour de Fleece is changing slightly because of this:

That's the skein of long-draw Cheviot last seen on the bobbin here. It's Navajo-plied and 1 3/8 ounces of overspun unevenness destined for pet toys, felting, or rugs. The bobbin is spun much more evenly, but still has numerous lumps from what I've determined are second cuts in the batt. Grrrr. There's not enough of me to go around to hand-card or comb the remaining 8 ounces of the Giant Batt and spin it for Le Tour de Fleece, so I'm changing my goal slightly.


That's 1 1/2 ounces spun of this fiber I bought a few months ago. It spins so much faster! It's more beautiful! It has about 1% of the lumps and VM as the Giant Batt! I am in love and want to get more of this fiber at Oregon Flock and Fiber in September.

The quantity of fiber part of my goal is still the same: a pound. It'll just be different fiber for the second half. It's not cheating but a replacement part, like a new tire. LOL

In garden news, my tomato plant is blooming:


As are the lemon cucumbers:

Ta Ta for now!

Pondering a Goal for Tour de Fleece

I'm not usually a great goal setter, but the Tour de Fleece requires one, stated or not, to "win." We're supposed to spin from stash and do something that's a personal challenge. Given my relative newness to the craft and my self-teaching methods, I'm not up to anything fancy (yet). But I do have all the cheviot and karakul in 12 to 18 ounce batts. Those are *big* batts. I've spun some of the karakul already, so I'm thinking the white cheviot. A whole batt. Making quantities of yarn large enough to knit at least a pair of socks (3+ ounces). So, up to 4 batches of yarn, each consistent with itself. It will all be white (no time to acquire dye and dye the batt, even if I knew how yet), but I can dye the resulting yarn later.

My initial thought to spin a whole giant batt (visualize, if you will, spinning a giant bat around on a string!) (just kidding) seemed too grand until today when I read Stephanie's post. If she can spin 3 *pounds* I can spin one. I don't have budding Erica Claptons in the house playing the same song over and over and over! LOL

Here's the batt with Pepper included for scale. Or if you think she's a giant cat (she's not, at 10 pounds), the batt is about 22 inches by 5 feet. Yes, feet. BTW, it's overcast today, so the pictures are not the greatest, but they'll do.


And to show vegetative progress, here's my first baby courgette:


The cucumber trellis made of field fencing:


Cute cucumber tendrils:


And the tomato plant from Louise:


I got the field fencing at the neighborhood feed store. It has 6 inch square holes so I can pick/weed/whatever through it, and it was easy to set up using zip ties to "sew" the ends together and anchor the fencing to the handles on the washtub since that trellis only goes part way around.