What's Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday everyone!  Wednesday is actually a long day for me because it's when I do my laundry and I really don't like doing laundry.  All that sorting, folding, climbing stairs, and having to wait around for the machines to finish, bleck!  I try to remind myself to be grateful though; it wasn't too long ago that laundry day meant washing your clothes by hand and hanging them on the line!

I've been pretty busy this last week!  I've been canning, sewing, stitching, cleaning, and even pretending to be a mechanic.  So here's my week in pictures!

What's up with canning

Over the weekend, we picked pears.  It was time.  The neighbor's pears were just falling out of the tree, so we had to get to it before they were all gone!  His tree didn't have many pears, but they were very big and nice.  His are lovely to just eat.  So juicy and sweet!  Pears in the store don't even come close to how nice these are.  Then we went over to Hubby's mom's house to pick her tree.  Her pears are smaller, but she had so many of them!  And they were very nice this year, hardly any defects or worm holes.  All in all, I figure we got about 3/4 of a bushel.  Here they are all separated out.  They need to continue to ripen before I can start canning them.

 I also started canning meals-in-a-jar, which are basically ready to eat cans of food!  These are so handy to have when I'm having a busy or tiring day, or I forget to thaw some meat the day before.  They aren't very pretty to look at, but they're very delicious.

Here's hearty chicken stew:

And here's curried chicken and beef stroganoff:
 

I have two more recipes I'm going to make probably in the next week: split pea soup and chili.  That should keep us well stocked in ready to eat meals for most of the winter.

What's up with sewing

I started quilting my ridiculous vegetable quilt last weekend too.  I plan on posting a Tuesday tip about my quilting method, so keep an eye out for that next week.

Here's where the pretending to be a mechanic bit comes in.  I'm not sure what got me into this, but I've been thinking about getting a vintage machine the last couple of weeks.  They're well built, easy to maintain, and in many cases, run so much nicer than modern machines.  After a lot of looking and research, I finally decided on a Singer 301A, and got a really good deal for one on Etsy.  The lady gave me a good deal because it's missing the tension nut, but that's easy enough to replace.

I've been having a ball cleaning her up and oiled, and she works like a dream!  Can you believe that this machine can get up to 1600 stitches a minute?  My Brother, a heavy duty all metal mid-arm straight stitch machine built for quilting, can only do 1500.  And the Singer is soooo much quieter than any modern machine.  It sounds like rain on a roof, even at high speed.  Lovely!  I'm just waiting for the tension nut to come in the mail, and then I'll be sewing on this beauty! 

(PS, yes, that brings me to a total of four sewing machines.)

What's up with plastic canvas

I've been working steadily on the new wall hanging design, too!  This is a big one, so I suspect I won't have it finished until next week sometime.  I really like how it's coming out so far.

This is going on the wall next to my sewing machines! 

Well, I hope you're all having a good week!  I need to get my butt moving because my to-do list is pretty long!  See you later!