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Soundtrack for today's post:

Coming home - My little brother came home this week from Afghanistan.  It's good to have him home again.  This was his second deployment.  Last time he was in Iraq, and I was living in India for a good portion of that deployment, so it was nice to be in the states for this deployment.  I was able to send him dried fruits and baked goods and occasional summer sausages. Of course, he flew home to the other side of the state, so I wasn't able to make the  6 hour drive to see him land.  But, I was able to take down the star from the window.

Home year round - We're getting ready for another long winter. Window quilts are going up, plastic on the outside, the whole nine yards.  We've got the heater on, but just barely.  I think it's at like 69  right now. The basement is nice and cool and has a good selection of potatoes, onions and garlic.   With my free apple tree not producing this summer, I don't have any apples stored. But, I'm feeling like we're pretty prepared for winter.
 The summer bounty is all canned and pickled. Yay for being done with the canner for the year! lol I have 3 butternuts, and dozens of pumpkins from my winter squash vines.  Awesome!  The Swiss Chard, kohlrabi and the turnips are still unperturbed by the frosty mornings, so I'm continuing to harvest fresh food.

Home for the holidays - We'll have much loved guests for Yule this year, so we've already started planning for that.  What food we want to cook, what presents we want to make.  What we want for decorations. I've fallen behind on my sew along for the Tree Pants, but it's ok.  I'm still plugging along, and I fell behind to make Rowen the cutest costume.  I went to my local fabric store and bought 1 yard of red cotton, a quarter yard of white, and I free handed a big circle and a little 'm'.  I backed the red circles with some fleece so he stays warm enough after the sun goes down, plus it helps to keep the shape.  Rowen was so happy with his M&M costume, and he got lots of complements during it's inaugural run last weekend.   We all went out to the Trick or Treating at the local county park.  It was a great night and we had a blast.

My first star!

Anyway, here's a shot of the first star I completed.  I didn't like it 100%, so I went to the fabric store and bought some cream to mix in with the cream/flower print.  Those stars look awesome. I have several of those done, I'll try and snap a picture of those this weekend.  (While I'm frantically trying to catch up with the other sewers ... lol)
It's not to late to join in the sew along.  You can follow the action at the Happy Zombie blog. Or at Sew Mama Sew.

Home for one more - I'm finishing up my 10th week with the tadpole.  Basil is still a no go, but the nausea in general is slowly starting to decrease. We're moving on the eating-every-three-hours stage. :-D Dave took some pictures of me this last weekend, but we'll keep this post family friendly. :-D  You're welcome mother.  We'll snap some PG ones soon and I'll share some belly bump.
Here's a candid shot of the tadpole.

Fall harvests

Well in spite of the frost a couple of weeks ago, my tomatoes are finally ripening. :-D
The row cover protected them from the cold, and the wind, and we've had just enough warm sunny weather to ripen a couple dozen nice fruits.   So, I spent the weekend canning, a rainbow of deliciousness.  I did something fun this time and canned red tomatoes together, and canned yellow tomatoes together and one small jar of Green Zebra tomatoes.  The Green Zebras don't look so hot. That nice sunny yellow and light green stripe that they get when ripe, all that disappeared in the canner, so they look like unripe blotchy green tomatoes. lol

Red, Yellow and Green goodness

I still have a small pile of tomatoes on the counter. Not sure what we'll do with them, it's still being discussed.  We've got plenty of jars,  (Thanks Mom!!) so we may roast and can another batch of basil-less sauce for me.  (The zygote has decided basil is nasty and not to be eaten, seen or smelled, and is willing to upchuck food in order to enforce that opinion.  This is very annoying as I've had an awesome year for basil production.)

Dave has finished the chair he was making for Rowen.  We took some birthday money that Grandma DeeDee sent for him, and we bought some wood and a few hand tools and Dave made him a chair, just his size!  We got some stain, so that still needs to go on, but it looks pretty good.

As the days darken and the garden bounty wanes, I'm once again drawn to my sewing room.   I have a massive window quilt that was supposed to be finished earlier in the spring, and is still patiently waiting to be finished with the hand quilting. I have a vest for Rowen made out of fleece, with a zipper and hoodie.  I ordered the zipper this weekend, and I've sewn as far as I can go without it.   While I'm waiting on the zipper, I have started tree pants for the yule tree I'm determined to have this year.  (Tree pants, because not all trees like to wear skirts. hahaha)  I'm making crimson stars on a cream flowered background.  I've not done any stars yet, this will be my first attempt, I'm following the Happy Zombie sew along to help me through the bumps. Thankfully her pattern is a square tree pants, because round things are yet another aspect of quilting I've not got to. :-D  I'll try to put together a star or two and post the results in a day or two. Wish me luck!

Crimson stars on the cream/flowers.

National Sewing Month Wrap Up

Yes indeed, September was National Sewing Month. So, I'll show off some home-made goodies.

Here is the new curtain I made for the bathroom.  This is a window that used to be covered with just the blue checked fabric, donated by my mother and tacked to the wall.   I thought to myself, "Self, we can do better than that."  So, I designed this little piece to cover the window and use the donated fabric, plus some remnants that were languishing in the fabric pile.    The bottom third is unquilted, because in the summer the bottom of this window is often open for airflow. So, I wanted to keep that part of the window covering light enough to allow for that.  The butterflies are my first attempt with iron on embellishment.  Not bad. I'll probably never do it again. :giggle:  I'll spare you the list of goof-ups, you can see them yourself if you look. :-D  All in all, I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

Mom made Rowen the cutest little train bag to hold all of his Thomas the Train pieces and cars.  Utterly adorable. Super sturdy, and he loves it already.  Thanks Mom!

The two of us are headed to the AQS show in Des Moines this weekend.  She's headed that way right now, and I'll be joining her this Friday.  Can't wait! It's so much fun to see all the new quilts and buy pretty materials from the vendors. A weekend with my mom is icing on the cake.

I've almost got an apron done for my cousin in Texas - Hi JoBeth! - all I'm lacking is the final bit of rick-rack.  This was my first time working with rick-rack and I totally messed it up.  Not enough to redo it, just enough that I had to go back and re-read everything and look at all the pictures to figure out what I really need to do with this stuff.  C'est la vie. But, I have to say, I hate it when patterns tell you to buy 2 packages of something, and that's NOT enough.  Have packages of rick-rack gotten smaller in the past few years? What's the deal with that?

I got in some more diaper fabric from my buying co-op, so as soon as I get all the existing diapers inventoried I'll be starting on new baby diapers.  :-D  If you do a lot of sewing, and you haven't looked into fabric buying co-ops you absolutely should. They are wonderful.  Warning: they are also enablers, if you have trouble saying no to good buys, DON'T JOIN.  lol

I hope your September was full of sewing, and your October is too!

Fall Begins

I drive to work with the sun rising over the golden corn fields.  The tractors are already at work in the early light. An occasional pheasant or hawk can be seen taking their morning sun. I'm sure there's beauty to be had in places like NYC, but to me, nothing beats the views I enjoy here in NW Iowa, especially on a sunny fall morning.

The entertainment isn't terrible either.  We took the boy to the corn maze again last night.  He had fun last year, but this year he was much more interested in the playground and the kids than he was in pumpkins or corn. And of course we had to discuss all the animal sounds that the petting zoo animals made.

I asked the pumpkin grower what she thought about my volunteer pumpkin patch and how edible the fruit are likely to be. She thought I had a great chance of having edible fruit, and a likely chance that they are edible but not fantastic-tasting.   That makes me excited to try them and see.  We picked up a couple of squashed for decorating and 1 pie pumpkin just to compare against my volunteers.

The garden is limping along, tomatoes are gamely ripening, one at a time, so I'm hopeful I'll get one last batch of something made with them.  Seeds are setting and drying. Squash are hardening. 

"Though the fields lay golden;
Something whispered, snow."

Family=Family++

For my code-impaired readers, the title means basically Add 1 to Family.   :-D

I'm happy to announce that Dave and I are expecting a little podling around May 20th.  I'm happy to have a warm little proto-human nestled inside for the long cold winter ahead. And I'm happy that most of the ice and snow will be gone when I hit the huge-and-clumsy stage at 8+ months.   It'll mean another year of spring planting with nursling in tow, and winter garden planning to include another baby's worth of peas and squash. Love it. :-)

We had our first frost yesterday, so the gardening heyday is definitely done.  I've got my blankets and such out, trying to extend the season, Rowen helped me wrap the tomatoes up.  It kept them from freezing, but they are definitely stressed, I can see signs of blight and I just don't know if all the green tomatoes will ripen or not.

The squash vines are slowly dieing, revealing their fruit goodness. I think I'll have a few butternuts and a dozen or so little green acorns and 6 at least pumpkins.  Whether they are all edible, remains to be seen, since most of those are volunteers.

The squash has been a fun experiment

We have large quantities of goodness stashed away in jars. Green beans did really well this year, as did the herbs and onions and garlic.  Potatoes did well enough, and I might get one more head of cabbage before the end of the year.   So, while I'm not ready to see it end for the  year, I am happy with the bounty we got for our efforts.

Rowen helping pick the green beans

Kindergardens - The edges of the day

Dawn, and dusk. Something about those times creates magic in the garden. Dawn still retains some of the darkness and mystery of night. Fog and mist twine around the growing produce, especially here in zone 4 as we ease into chilly September. There's so much promise to the day, what will be new? A new tomato? A new squash blossom?
Dusk brings an easing of the day's heat. Dew gathers as the coolness of night spreads. The fading sunlight and the twinkling of the first stars. Yea, there's definitely something about the edges of the day.

August has been a productive garden month. We've had a steller run of the bush green beans and purple beans. I've got the first pumpkin, and we've harvested at least a dozen summer squash. Potatoes and onions and garlic are nestled in their storage locations. Rows of jars are full of August bounty. Little bits of summer, ready for the long winter ahead.

Rowen quickly learned the joys of green bean picking. After he tired of plucking at random parts of the patch, he decided to help move the piles of beans from one place to a "better" place. Then he decided that the green beans and the purple beans should be in different piles. lol
He's also really intrigued by the watering process. Mostly I think he just likes to play in the water, but often he'll fill the can up and lug it around and water plants that interest him. It doesn't seem to be plants that necessarily need water, one time he spent 5 minutes watering one especially large squash leaf.


We have some amazing volunteer squash that have literally taken over the yard this month. (And the tree, and the garden and the compost pile....) Behold, the elusive tree squash. A delicacy, or so I'm hoping.

Stay tuned for an exciting child related announcement later this week. :-)

Projects getting done

Well, in spite of the busy garden season, I am finding time to finish up some projects. Sewing projects first, since I've been garden heavy on this blog lately.

I've finished my first knitted scarf! It's really basic, with an easy to wash yarn and a pretty variegated green color that should match well with my camo parka. That's right, camo matching tips, right here on My Path to Freedom. hahaha Seriously though, I wasn't sure I'd like knitting. It seemed complicated and I thought for sure the 2 year old would unravel everything at least once, but to my surprise, it was a nice project for those evenings when I didn't want to read, and it was really nice to travel with. I think I must have knitted half of it on planes traveling for work. Yes, you can get on a plane with knitting needles in the US. I have done it multiple times since the increases in security after 9/11.

I've already started project #2, it's a headband/ear cover in a plain black wool, with nice ribbing. The ribbing was tricky at first, but I feel like I'm really starting to get a handle on multiple stitches and patterns. The ribbing makes the headband stretchy, but in a firm sort of way, so I think it will stay on nicely.

I finished a wall hanging for my mother's birthday! A bit belated, but I think she likes it. I'm usually not big on fancy sewing for hanging on a wall. But, she's my mother and she deserves it.

I made a big bag for Rowen to put his Little People playset in. It's one of those sets that has a dozen little people, with little cars and a farm house with little animals... cute, but annoyingly easy to spread around the house like little bits of chaos. So, a big soft bag, with drawstrings was in order. I used Minky, strong seam techniques and some tie line from Dave for a free drawstring. Love it.

With the ever patient help of my husband, we got the curtains up in the basement food storage room. This means I can get the potatoes out of the kitchen and down there and hopefully have fewer of them sprout this spring. We also got gifted my Dad's hand-me-down shop vac, so the basement can get a much needed cleaning. Cleaning is important for more than just superficial looks, it means fewer attractions for vermin and fewer things for mold/mildew to hangout on.


Curing has finished for the garlic and onions, and I'm doing a bit of cleaning and sorting and trying to get them in their proper places. I have over 60 onions and about 25 garlic heads. I still need to find more of both, in order to store sufficient quantities to see us through till next spring. The cleaning isn't an involved process, I'm just trimming up the dried roots and trimming off the dried tops. (I don't braid them, if you are braiding, you'll want to do that while they are still green and pliable.) The garlic usually has an outer layer of the paper-skins that's dirty, and I'll gently thumb that off, mostly for appearance, partially to keep dirt out of the garlic storage bags.


We got 5 pints of salsa canned this weekend. Sssshhh, don't tell Rowen that we don't need the food mill to make salsa. He does love to help.