Harvest?

Conversations around me seem to be of harvest and bringing in produce. Sure enough even dh and I shared our first home grown tomato last night. In this case it was only a cherry tomato and my half was the size of a dime but we'll take it.

My grandfather had a garden futher back than I can remember. He was always growing the best veggies, and one of the very special things about grandma and papa's house was the FREEZER PICKLES. So since I'm in a sharing mood today I will share with you the how-to's of freezer pickles.

Freezer Pickles
2 quarts unpealed cucumbers sliced (4-6 large cucumbers make a quart)
2 tablespoons salt
2 Medium onions sliced (I think she used vadalia's when she could get them)
Mix and let stand 2 hours
Make syrup of 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/2 vinegar
Boil only until sugar is melted.
Remove from heat, with coll set aside in refrigerator.

Drain cumbers and onions and squeeze out all the water. Pack into plastic containers. Pour the syrup over the pickles, cover with a lid and freeze. When I was older she used ziploc bags to take up less space in the freezer and served them up in her tupperware "pickle server".

1/2 teaspoon celery salt can be added to each container if desired.

It might sound odd but I PROMISE it's wonderful.

Yesterday's post did indeed motivate me to work on the perinatal quilts. I now have another top done and ready to quilt, this one will be either a Medium or Large Preemie, I know what an oxymoron. I have two Small preemies quilted but I'm out of the blue satin bias binding I wanted to use, so they will have to wait a little while.

I have completed the embroidery on the label for Jessica's quilt. You really have to look at it to see all the work I did. I even put french knots in the swirl centers, but the colors don't really show off my work.

I think I need my head examined because now I'm thinking of beginning the quilting for this quilt MYSELF. Yes, I'm very near committed. I'm planning on machine stitching the blocks with hand quilting for the hearts that would run up and down the boarders. I can't even begin to explain how careful I will have to be to budget my time and not over work my hand. I'm tempted to tell dh that if I start it and don't have it finished in two years he has to contact a hand quilter to finish it. A nice safety net I thought of.