And time goes by...

The days have been passing by but I haven't accomplished much. Between the cold and my back I spend a lot of time resting and I think it's working - my cold is much better. The back improvement is slow but there is improvement. 

I celebrated my 70th birthday! How can I be that old??! On my birthday we took a little road trip to some orchards in Wisconsin. We brought home apples to eat, to dry, to make applesauce, to make pie, and to freeze. It's taking a while but everything is getting done. 

I love apple chips dried with a little cinnamon and sugar.

I made applesauce with Cortland, Jonathon, McIntosh, and Cameo apples. I used the Instant Pot and cooked the cored apples with 1/2 cup water. When they were done, I put them though a food mill which takes care of the skins. I think the Jonathon skins are responsible for us having pink applesauce this year.

I bought a mini pie pan from Pampered Chef and finally got around to making some little apple pies one day. They are cute and good! Four are in the freezer. It's a little hard for me to roll pie dough right now so I decided to freeze some of the apples for pies in the future.

One evening we went to a small cemetery that is high on a hill. The sunset and moonrise were just minutes apart and the photographer decided he was going so I tagged along. There were no clouds but there was lots of dust in the air so there was still a little color in the sky. The farmers around here are combining soybeans and it creates lots of dust.

sunset

moonrise

I was on the west side of the cemetery looking at Ray on the other side photographing the moon.

I've been playing with the flannel that I bought on our Michigan trip. I cut the pieces for a Take Five quilt. That top is pretty much together. Now I'm trying to put together a quilt with the leftovers. This is on the design wall.

I tried to edit pictures in Photoshop the other day and it wouldn't work. It's an older version and I just updated my MacBook Pro to Mojave - ugh! It took a few hours but I finally got that figured out. Then I decided to tackle my problem with posting on blogs. That took most of another day; I'm happy that I can post again but not happy that I can't fix the real problem. Don't you just love computer problems??!

Hopefully I'll be spending more time sewing in the next few days.

A couple of knitting finishes and more

I've been keeping busy and I just don't seem to get around to blogging! 

There's been lots of dehydrating: onions, potatoes, dill, cucumbers, zucchini, bananas, brown rice, tomatoes, more tomatoes, and whatever else I find.  I will use many of the tomatoes for tomato powder and the zucchini for zucchini powder. The tomato powder can be reconstituted into tomato paste, sauce, puree, and juice. The zucchini powder will be used in smoothies. Some zucchini will be reconstituted for baked goods. I finally tried reconstituting bananas we've always just eaten the banana chips and it worked great for baking. 

I roasted some garlic and made garlic butter - roasted garlic mixed with butter, basil, and a little lemon juice. I also made one 'stick' with oregano instead of basil. Everything is mushed together then put into a block and it's stored in the freezer. It's pretty good! 

I've been playing with my new Instant Pot - some successes and some opportunities to improve. There is a learning curve and I am climbing it! The tapioca pudding was quite runny but good. The yogurt really didn't set up. I guess two opportunities to improve isn't too bad. Everything else I've tried has been great.

I finished a scarf that I began knitting a while ago. It's made with Zauberball; I love the color and the pattern Girl's Best Friend.

I'll wear this around my neck as a scarf not a shawl. It should look great with a dark shirt.

I bought some Wooly Wonka yarn; the color is White Birch. I thought it would be great to use with some other yarn for socks. Well, it wound up loosely and then I decided to use it from both ends. What was I thinking??? I ended up with a mess! 

I cleaned up the tangled mess it took a while. The socks are now done and they look great. I used the leftovers from my Baddeck Socks and the leftovers from my scarf (above). The socks match except for the foot part.  I was hoping to get the tops to match so I'm happy. I used Dorothy's Slip Stitch Spiral Knit Socks pattern.

I have been quilting for 15 minutes most days and will have a finish soon.