DUCAN DECKING, DUKE AND REFRESH

I just happened to come across a comment on a post from 2015 asking about the Ducan decking and the use of the cleaner Duke and the product Refresh to "spiff up" the Ducan decking.  Sorry I didn't see it when it was posted this past June, but I hope whoever asked the questions sees this belated answer.

We installed the Ducan decking probably around 2001.  So it was a good 14 years old when I first used the Duke and Refresh on it.  The decking itself was still in pretty good condition but had faded dramatically and needed some help.

I applied two coats that first summer and then either in '16 or '17 I did another coat.  When the snow is gone in the spring I do a good wash.  Because the surface is "dimpled" it needs a good scrubbing to get the dirt out of the dimples.  I cleaned it this spring, but because of all the soot from the wildfires this summer it needed another cleaning recently.

Two weeks ago tomorrow I got out there with a power washer, a push broom and some Duke cleaner.  After an hour and a half it looked great again.  But my right shoulder was painful for a week and a half.  So I won't do that again.  This week I ordered a Boss Mini Gloss Floor Machine from Home Hardware.  That will provide the "elbow grease" the next time I scrub the balcony or the tiles in the sun space, the glassed in windowed area below the balcony.

PEAR JAM

One Wednesday while I was gone to pick up dear son #1 at the Calgary airport, S. picked a load of pears from the three pear trees at the back of the garden.  Thursday morning she came and helped me wash them and cut them up.  After she left I began the process of boiling them and putting them through the food mill in preparation for turning them into pear jam.

I found that they needed to be boiled quite a bit longer than the apples.  It took quite a bit to make them mushy enough for the food mill (a simple hand-turned French style food mill) to turn them into sauce.  I tried putting them through an Omega juicer but that didn't work well at all.  So I just kept on plugging away with boiling and using the food mill.

When there was 6 cups of pear "sauce" I made a batch of jam.  Then went back to making sauce.  I did this all day, with just two breaks, one for a cookie and glass of milk, and one for some late, late breakfast.  It was 5:38 by the time I finally finished "saucing" and making jam and got the kitchen cleaned up.  Fortunately DS#1 had gone for pizza, so that was a treat after a day "slaving away" in the kitchen!

PEAR JAM
Mix together:
6 cups of pear sauce
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp.  nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ginger.

Mix together:
1/4 cup sugar with
1 pkg No Sugar added Pectin.

Stir this mixture into the pear sauce mix.
Bring to a boil.
Add 4 1/4 cups sugar.
Return to a boil and boil hard for one minute.

Ladle into hot, sterile jars and seal with a
hot self-sealing lid  Screw the ring on tight and
place on a pad of towels to protect the counter.
Leave space between the jars so they cool and
snap shut.

The day's total: 19 jars and a little leftover in the fridge.

This is enough for a few years, I think!  There are lots more pears to come, but I will be giving them away and this is more than enough.  Especially since I had already made 17 quarts of raspberry freezer jam and 4 jars of cooked raspberry jam.

MAKING APPLESAUCE

Today dawned cold, rainy and very windy.  The thermometer stood at +2C, or about +35ºF.  But this was the day to pick apples and make applesauce.  The apples on the tree by greenhouse #1 were ready.  There was nothing else on the schedule, other than the usual chores.  So S. came over and together we picked two large pails of apples.  Not so many as usual, but enough for now.

She helped me wash and cut up the apples.  From there they went into two big stockpots to cook down to sauce.  I took a break while they cooked, had a cup of coffee and read for a while.  Latest book: Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers.  Around 12 I started putting the soft cooked apples through the food mill, spooning them into 1 pint jars and putting them into the hot water bath in the canner.

I was really thankful that I had a frozen lasagne, Basilli's Best, in the freezer, the right size for just the two of us.  I'm not very good at making lasagne, it's a lot of work, and this grocery store freezer lasagne is actually very good.  That saved me making dinner at the same time that I was making applesauce.

By 1:50 p.m. the applesauce was finished.  Ten pint jars (actually slightly more content, as they are metric) and three 4 cup containers.  All the jars sealed!!!  I used to have at least 2 out of 7 jars that didn't seal.  S. clued me into the fact that the boiling water needs to be about 2" ABOVE the tops of the jars.  Somehow I never knew that, although I've done lots and lots of canning over the years.  So I was VERY happy that all 10 jars sealed themselves.  This tree, which I call the "Greenhouse Apple Tree"--we don't know what variety it is--makes lovely pink applesauce that needs no sugar.  We use lots of this applesauce, both with dinners and on our breakfast pancakes.

A very satisfying accomplishment on a cold, cloudy, windy Monday.

QUILTY FUN

At our planning meeting last May the Pieceful Stitchers, the in-town quilt club, decided that we would all make a Jacob's Ladder quilt this year and submit them as a group to the Red Deer Quilt Show.  The idea is to demonstrate how one pattern can be interpreted in so many different ways.  I wanted to get started on that project so I looked in my stash and found two fabrics that looked good together, the batik print on the left and the purple print in the middle.  I took them to the Fabric Nook and found this gold that looked good with them.  I thought I was all set.

I looked up and printed a Jacob's Ladder quilt block from the internet.  Using that I calculated how much fabric I would need to make a 12 block quilt, 12" per block.  According to my figures I had just enough of the batik and plenty of the purple.  I bought .6 of a meter of the gold, figuring that was plenty.

I checked my calculations several times, and, to my dismay, ended up with different figures each time.  I'm not very perceptive about math, so I was a bit worried.  Finally I decided to take the fabrics to the Fabric Nook and find replacements for the batik and the purple.  You'll see them later.  But back home again and after another attempt to figure out how many inches of each fabric I needed, I thought my originals might possibly do.  So I simply started cutting and sewing, figuring, "I'll see how it turns out."

I made the squares for one block and put them up on the design wall.  This is the second try.  I discovered something funny: I had figured things out wrong and what was supposed to be the background became the ladder.  Oh well, if it looks different, maybe that's a good thing!

That was yesterday afternoon.  Today I made all the squares for all of the blocks.  THERE WAS PRECISELY JUST ENOUGH FABRIC!  If I had needed one more block it wouldn't have worked.  How many times does THAT happen?

The squares needed for each of the 12 blocks are in neat little stacks on the cutting board.  When I get the blocks made I'll play around a bit with the placement.  It's an ongoing adventure!  

HELLO AGAIN

The Thursday after my last blog post our dear daughter and two grands arrived for a visit. That's always such a pleasure because not one of our four kids and no grands live closer than a 10 hour drive.  This is being just a great summer because three of the kids and three of the grands either have been here or are still planning to come.  And we hope to see some of them around the turn of the year again!

That Saturday the garden harvest took off.  This is what S. and I picked that day:

She helped me with the snipping and preparing.  The carrots are all washed and in the fridge for present eating.  The beans were processed and yielded 15 pints.  That's plenty to have on shelves downstairs.

 

 There has been lots more from the garden.  We are eating most of it fresh.  I've been making a "vegetable stew" from Fava Beans, onions, zucchini, tomatoes and bell peppers. That's a nice filling meal that we've had several times in the last few weeks.

Our t.v., which we've had since 1986, started doing strange things.  After we turned it off, it would turn itself back on, display static and emit and VERY LOUD static sound.  I was afraid it would explode!  So this Monday I went to Red Deer and asked a lot of questions at London Drug.  Mike patiently answered them all and guided me to what would be a good choice for us.  A Samsung 43" 1080P LED Smart t.v. came home with me.  It's all hooked up and we are really enjoying it.  I'm the techie here, and not much of a one, but I did manage to get it set up.  The funny thing is that we need to use the new remote to turn it on, control the volume or mute it.  To change channels we need to use the remote that came with the HD Bell Express Vu satellite box.  If we knew a bit more about these things, we might be able to do better, but this works for us.  It's a much bigger, brighter picture than the old RCA.

And today I finally was able to get at the latest quilting project.  This sample Pinwheel quilt top is now finished.  It will go to the IDA as an unfinished top, i.e., not "sandwiched" and quilted.  That will allow those interested to examine the back and see how the seams are pressed.  There is already a completely finished Pinwheel quilt there, meant to interest quilters in a "Demo Day" in September when I will demonstrate my method of making Pinwheel Blocks.  When I have the directions all printed out I will post them on the blog.

 

FIXING HOLES

The Dear One always said No when I asked if he'd like a pair of hand knit socks.  I thought that maybe it was because he thought the colour would be too bright.  Finally in 2015 I simply knit him a pair of hand knit socks in Patons Kroy Sock Yarn, my favourite for socks (75% washable wool for warmth and comfort and 25% nylon for strength) in this colour, Flax.  I gave them to him for Christmas.  He put them on and had an epiphany: hand knit woolen socks felt GREAT!!!  Turns out he always thought they wouldn't  feel good.  Since then I've knit him six pairs of socks.

Because it takes a lot of time and effort to knit a pair of socks, and because they tend to get holes under the heel and ball of the foot while the rest of the sock is still in prime condition, it is very worthwhile to repair these holes.  Here's a small hole and a very thin area in a pair of socks I knit for him in February of 2017.  And here's how I fix holes in socks.  First with a very thin double point (dp) needle I pick up the stitches in a row below the hole.

Then I begin knitting these picked up stitches with the regular size sock needles.  At the beginning of each knit row I pick up a stitch from the sole of the sock, in the same vertical column of stitches but the second row up.  I slide that stitch onto the needle ahead of the first stitch and knit the two stitches together.

                       
I knit to the end of that row of stitches.  Before the last stitch I pick up a stitch from the sole in the same vertical column of stitches as the last stitch on the needle and knit those two stitches together.

Turn the knitting and purl back to the beginning.  Repeat until the hole and thin area are covered with the new knitting.

When you are a good long way past the hole and worn out spot cut the yarn quite a distance from the last stitch at the end of a purl row.  (The picture shows the working yarn at the beginning of a purl row.  Don't let that confuse you.)

Thread the end of yarn through a yarn needle.  Thread the yarn needle through a stitch in the sole, bring it up purl-wise through the first stitch on the needle.  Pass the yarn under the needle tip, pass it under the point of the "v" of the corresponding stitch in the sole.  (Sorry, no picture.)  Now pass it under the point of the needle and through the first stitch knit-wise.  Slide that stitch off the needle.  Repeat with the next stitch--first passing the yarn through that stitch purl-wise.  This is a modified version of the Kitchener stitch which is used to connect two pieces of knitting invisibly, by creating a hand-needled row between the top and the bottom of two pieces of knitting.

Sorry about no picture.  The next time I do this procedure I'll take and post pictures.

Here are the mended socks:  The left sock looks a little different.  It's just a change of yarn after a few inches on mend on that sock.  Just started the mend with the wrong yarn, but who will notice on the sole of the sock?

This repair will extend the life of these socks considerably.  This pair is one of my favourites because of the cable design on the top of the foot and on the legs.  Several of his pairs of socks are this same Flax colour, but I make each one somewhat differently so that when they come out of the wash I can match them to their mates.

There was another pair with even bigger holes in my mending basket, but I thought I'd try something different.  The Dear One only recently told me that the reason he likes hand knit socks so much is because they are softer and cushion his feet more than bought socks.  He has Peripheral Neuropathy in both feet and legs which makes them feel "pins and needles" much of time.  These socks help with that by cushioning his feet somewhat.

Well, that gave me an idea for the next "hole repair" session.  I picked up and knit a whole other sole with this difference: I stuffed bits of roving between the "holey" sole and the new sole, thinking: this will really give him a good cushion.

This pair had been mended earlier--you can see the mend  on the heel at right, but now the mend had a hole in it and beside it where it joined the sole.

This time I started at the toe and picked up extra stitches along the side of the toe.  When I got to the side of the sole I used the method described above.  As I went along I stuffed the cavity between the new and old soles with cut up roving (roving is unspun yarn).  The majority of time yesterday was devoted to this project.  I finished by 9 p.m. (having taken out time to have a hair cut, buy groceries and go out for lunch).  

It looks like a sock with a foot in it!

When he tried it on he asked, Will it compact a bit?  Probably, with some wearing and washing.  But what a lovely new sole for this sock!

Next week I'll try to do up the other sock of this pair.  It's still a LOT less effort and time compared to knitting a whole new pair!