August 8, 2026 - Progress Report - Blackbird Academy

 My plan for all the Blackbird Academy projects is to complete ten projects during the ten months of Blackbird Academy. To do this, I will choose some projects that should take a couple of weeks and some projects that may take six or eight weeks. Even though I will not get the larger projects completed in one month, I'm hoping to catch up or get ahead on those in the months with shorter projects. You all know how my plans go but I do love to plan ahead.

As far as stitching each project, I've divided the number of stitches, according to Markup, which isn't always right (it may not be Markup's error - it may be in how the chart is "programmed") but I will divide the total stitches shown by the number of stitches I can reasonably make in a day, only count six days because I don't work on these projects on Wednesday when I'm stitching with Debbie.

My August project is Christmas Rose by Blackbird Designs, which has 4,502 stitches. Here's my progress as of yesterday:

Here's what I've stitched every day so far.

My goal for Christmas Rose was 400 stitches per day, not stitching on this on Wednesdays, and so far, I've stitched 3051, which is an average of averaged 435 stitches per day. I did get a few stitches done on Wednesday after stitching all day on something else with Debbie. According to Markup, I am about 67.5% complete. If I can get good stitching time the next four days, including today, I should have this finished by the end of Tuesday.

My September project is Come Into My Garden. They'll all be by Blackbird Designs. 

It has 10,208 stitches. It seems big but according to my math, if I can average 400 stitches per day, I can get it stitched in 26 days. Not counting Wednesdays, there are 25 stitching days in September. If I can get at least 400 stitches done each day and stitch a few every Wednesday evening when I get home, I should stay on track and finish by the end of September BUT I'm going to start this in August as soon as I finish Christmas Rose so that will give me a bit of wiggle room . . I hope!

I also plan to move the house down just a couple of rows, then move the flower basket down a couple few rows, leave off the little "almost cartouche" with Barb's name in it. My name is too long and I don't want it there. I may put my initials and the year or I may spread out four (instead of two) of those tulip looking flowers to fill up the space.

Both of these are projects I've wanted to stitch for several years so they're easy for me to work on and not put them aside. There are other Blackbird charts I've wanted to stitch so hopefully I can fit something that I love into the requirements each month and stick with it until it's finished.

It isn't breaking the rules to start early. We can choose new projects or WIPs.

August 8, 2026 - Who Cans Cherry Tomatoes?

 The answer to that question is probably "No one in their right mind!"

These are the tomatoes we call "Cooper tomatoes" because he loves them. He knows exactly where they are in the garden and he will run straight to them. I've read that the green parts (stems, leaves) are not good for dogs so I don't like him picking his own but he is one determined little dog - all the time but especially when tomatoes are involved.

Last year I planted one plant. This year they sprouted up everywhere in the yard. Everything I've planted is inside the fence but these tomatoes came up outside the fence, in parts of the yard where I've never planted tomatoes and my guess is that there are at least 100 of these plants growing. I haven't even watered most of them because I just don't need that many and the ones that aren't getting water are producing at the same rate as the ones that have been watered. The seeds I originally planted are called Sweet 100 and they are so sweet.

Tuesday I decided to run some through the food mill and see what I ended up with. I used about the same amount of tomatoes that are shown above and I ended up with 2 pints of the best tomato juice!

I used my small canner because I was water bathing them and the canner needed at least three jars so I added a jar of water just to take up space.

There was a little juice left over and I handed it to Vince to try. Oh . . he loved it and decided we need to get out there and pick a bunch of those tomatoes and make more juice.

Here's where it pays off to have him help with the process. I have a hand crank food mill and it was hard for my hands to crank it so I asked Vince to help.

Today he decided we needed an electric food mill. I did not say no to that idea.

This should arrive Monday so probably Monday or Tuesday we will put on our boots and long sleeve shirts (tomato plants make me break out) and go into the tomato jungle and harvest a bunch of those tomatoes and make more tomato juice.

If I had told Vince I wanted an electric tomato strainer, he would have looked at me like I was crazy but since he had to crank some of those tomatoes through the old food mill, he was very happy to find something that was easier, which means I will probably do the entire process without his help, which is fine with me. I don't mind if he helps but the kitchen isn't where he likes to be so . . I don't mind.

August 4, 2026 - Homemade Deli Meat

When we lived in Texas, I made most of our bacon and pretty much all of our deli type meat. I don't know why I stopped making it. I've been back in Missouri almost six years and know I haven't made any since we moved here.

We had gone to Sam's Club the other day and Vince picked up several packages of deli meat. After we got home, I told him . . you remember that I can make that and it's better and probably more healthy than buying it at the store. He asked what it would take for me to start making it again. I laughed and said "Another six hours in each day!" I told him if he knew where the meat slicer was, and could get to it, and if he would take the big blade off so I could clean it all, I'd make deli meat and start making bacon again. I have always been afraid of that slicer but after the immersion blender incident, I don't even want to be in the same room with that slicer.

Vince found it and when he was at Sam's again last week, he bought an eye of round roast and I made it into deli meat.

I know what some of you are saying . . it's too rare! That's how I like it and Vince likes to heat his up so with it cooked like this, I get it cooked the way I like it, I heat his up and there's hardly any pink left. I divided into 6 oz. portions, vacuum sealed all but one bag and put it in the freezer. 

Tonight we had roast beef sandwiches and Vince was so happy to have the homemade deli meat. I told him as soon as the garden gives me a break, I'll make more deli meat and promised I would do it before all the roast is gone.

For anyone interested in trying it, I'll share a few links that should give you more info.

Remember that you can add any seasonings you want. The techniques in the links are mostly what I want to share.

For chicken, this is the method I use for making sliced breast meat. I almost always substitute rosemary for the thyme but most any spice that you like would work.

If you want to use a meat press, this is the technique I use. I don't use this recipe as far as ingredients. I cut chicken breasts into chunks and put them in the food processor to "grind" them because I'm kinda picky about chicken meat. I like to use Cajun seasoning (Cajun Redhead is my favorite), which happens to be made in my hometown but I do not know the people. I also like to cut up and saute jalapeno peppers and add that to my ground chicken.

You can really season the beef any way you want to, and season the chicken any way you want to and it will always be perfect!

As far as buckboard bacon, once I start making that again, neither of us will ever want storebought bacon again so . . do I do it or not?  :)

You know I will do it! This is the technique I will use. I like how this guy explains everything and has a calculator so you can get it all perfect for whatever size meat you have. This recipe is a little more straightforward and if you've never done this before, it's probably at least worth reading before starting a bacon project.

One thing I like about the first link is that his formula gives you a minimum number of days for curing. I usually have a pork butt that's in the 5 pound range and the minimum curing time comes out to about 10 days. I don't mind going 11 or 12 days with the cure but no more so I try to pay attention to the weather. Our smoker is outside . . I guess most of us who have smokers use them outside but ours is on a deck without a roof and I have to go out and add wood to it and check on it often enough that I'd prefer not to be doing it on a rainy day so I try to let the weather be my guide on how long to cure it.

The guy in the first link says to cook it to 145-165. The second guy says 160. 

I always cook it to the lower end of "done" (145) because (1) It's going to get cooked in the skillet and (2) If the temp gets much above 145, the fat starts to render and, not only have you lost some of the yummy bacon fat but you can end up with a greasy mess when cutting and wrapping.

That's about it for the buckboard bacon. Cure it, smoke it, refrigerate it, slice it, wrap it and freeze it.

OK . . thanks for reading another episode of "Judy Has Too Many Irons in the Fire!"

August 3, 2026 - August Blackbird Academy Progress

 Yesterday was the third day of August and I'm still on track with my Blackbird project. Yep, there's still three days less than 10 months to go so we'll see if I keep this up.

As I posted my progress tonight, I had to laugh. I think Markup's math may be as bad as my math! It's too late to think about math so maybe I'm wrong . . 

But, Saturday I stitched 445 stitches and that was 11.4%. Sunday I stitched 363 and that brought me to 22%, which means I added 10.6%. Monday (today), I stitched 542 stitches, which brought me to 32.45%, adding 10.45%. How can 445 stitches equal 11.4% progress and 542 equal 10.45%. Shouldn't 542 stitches be a larger percentage of the whole than 445 stitches? Why does it even matter? Right . . that's what I was thinking.  <G>

My goal is to get at least 10% stitched each day so, in theory, it should take 10 days to finish this project but I don't stitch on this one on Wednesdays so I'm hoping to finish it on August 11.

And . . here's where I am now. It's actually pretty small.

Well . . looking at the picture I see that the Y and "&" are totally in the wrong place. I know what happened. Using Markup, you can look at it as one page with everything on one page or you can see page 1, 2, 3, individually. It's defaulting to the 2 page (chart only has 2 pages) setup. The Y and "&" were on the end but that was really only the end of page 1. Could have been worse. I'll get that fixed and then I'm going to bed!

July 31, 2026 Good News and More Good News

 The first good news is that I found my lost tablet. It was a week ago last Thursday that I couldn't find it. It has so many of my cross stitching charts on it and I was missing it terribly. Today I was moving some stuff around and found my tablet! It was right by my chair. I had tried to find it on "Find my Phone" and it wasn't ringing. It had fallen down behind the shelf where it was and had managed to fall into a basket of yarn and had made its way down under a bag of yarn!

The second nice thing is that I'm almost finished stitching the first "Ginger ornament" from Hands on Design. There's a bit of "decorating" that has to be done but the stitching will be finished tonight.

The third good news is that Blackbird Academy starts tomorrow. We will be stitching a new chart from Blackbird Designs every month - August through May. It's ok if we want to work on the same chart several months. There are suggestions as to what we stitch on each month. For August, it's a chart with the alphabet. For September, it's a chart with a bird. For December, it's Winter or Christmas. So many of Blackbirds' charts have the same things - a house, an alphabet, a bird, a flower, etc. You can see that Christmas Rose has a bird, a House, an alphabet, a flower and Christmas. I'm going to try to finish it in August but if not, I'll carry it over to another month.

September is a bird. I've been wanting to stitch Come into my Garden for a long time. I know I wrote about that last week. That's going to be my September project. If I don't finish it, I can work in it during the flower month or the house month. 

You can also see that I've created a little Blackbird Academy Journal. I'm really excited about this stitch along!

July 30, 2026 - Busy But Nothing to Report

 There's been things going on but nothing worth writing a blog post about. 

Of course I've been canning - more salsa; while I have lots of bell peppers and Giant Marconi peppers, which to me are pretty similar to bell peppers, I've been canning ground beef as the base for two casseroles we love. One is Philly Cheese Casserole. I brown the ground beef - not even totally brown but enough that it will not clump together in the jars, add onions and bell peppers towards the end, put the mix into 1-1/2 pint jars, top it off with beef broth, leaving 1" head space and pressure can it. Then when it's time to have it for dinner, I'll pretty much follow the recipe except I will drain most of the broth off but cook the meat with a little broth until it's hot and the broth has cooked down, then go on according to the recipe. It makes for a super quick meal and you'd never know the meat came out of a jar.

The other is recipe I like to can while I have way too many poblano peppers is  Chile Relleno Casserole. I scorch the peppers, peel them, then set them aside. I brown the ground beef with the onions as in the other recipe. I add the salt but no other seasons. Then I add the ground beef to the 1-1/2 pint jars, but only put the beef up about 2/3rd to the top. Then I put four or five of the peppers on top, pour beef broth over, leaving 1" head space. 

The only seasonings I add to both while in the jars is salt. Pints are pressure canned at the appropriate (for your level) pressure for 75 minutes; quarts for 90 minutes. When using 1-1/2 pint jars, I go with the time for quarts. Since the time for canning beef is longer than for canning peppers, I'm not concerned about the peppers in these recipes.

For winter, I love having red beans/sausage, beef stew, chili, the Philly Cheese Steak Casserole, Chile Relleno Casserole, Split Pea Soup and Sausage, Potato and Kale Soup. 

Tuesday I spatchcocked a chicken, which is how I like to roast them because the bones are pretty flat and I can stick the whole "structure" in a ziplock bag and freeze it until I'm ready to make bone broth. Not pretty but it was delicious. I picked the leftover meat off the bones and today I made chicken and rice.

Remember the eggplant I made the other day that was quite a bit of trouble? I made it again today but was lazy about making it. While it wasn't pretty, it tasted the same. I peeled the eggplant, sprinkled it heavily with salt and let it sit for about an hour, rinsed it, dried it, and cut it into chunks. I dried all those with paper towels, dipped them in egg, then seasoned cornmeal and fried them.

Then I spread them out on a parchment lined baking sheet, heated up marinara and poured it over the eggplant, added mozzarella and stuck it all under the broiler til the mozzarella began to melt.

Took it out, placed it on our plates and topped it with shredded basil. That's in the picture above with the chicken and rice. The good news is there's plenty of leftover eggplant and chicken and rice so we'll have it again Friday or Saturday.

Finally, I've been working on a new journal and can't wait to share that. I don't have it all put together yet - hopefully I will have it by the end of Friday. It's going to be a separate journal just for the Blackbird Academy which will last August 1 - July 31, 2027 with a new project each month.

There's one page out of it. You may not be able to read my scribbly  handwriting. Sorry.

Then there's what's left of the garden. I wanted Vince to help me pull out the tomatoes, except for Cooper's tomatoes but his back is bothering him.  It's time for the tomatoes and cucumbers to go. The squash is already gone except for a couple that I planted a few weeks ago. The eggplant may last til Christmas at the rate it's going! I probably should not have said that!  I've been trying to keep the basil cut so it doesn't bolt, which it REALLY wants to do so whatever I cut has to be freeze dried or dehydrated.  Summer is not my favorite season, partly because of all the work in the garden and the canning, but I bring that on myself. The other part is the heat and having to water so much but I think most all of us are in that same boat right now. I'm ready for winter. I'm ready for it to be dark early and all the outside chores are done before 4 p.m. -- just a couple more months of summer heat!

July 25, 2026 - A Finish & A Frame Ordered

 This was apparently my New Year's Day start in 2025 because I started it on January 1, 2025. Last night I finished it! One and one-half years sounds like a long time but I have plenty of WIPS that are much older than this one. Any finish is a good finish!

I kinda plopped it down on the ottoman and quickly took a photo before the dogs landed on top of it. Those straight rows are more straight than they appear . . I hope!

The chart is This is the Day by Plum Street. I changed a few things - over on the right side of the house, I put two flowers instead of some sheep and other things. I stitched it on Picture This Plus 36 count Regency and used Vikki Clayton Silks.

Some of this is ghosty -  the smoke from the chimneys and the Ram.  I'm no longer stitching ghosty things. I'll change the color of floss if it doesn't show up on my linen. 

Another thing - see the container of flowers to the left of the house. Those little shapes in the container that are not stitched . . those were supposed to be a light green and really didn't show up - just kinda blended into the container color. I thought they looked better not stitched with just the linen color showing through so I left them not stitched.

A reader asked yesterday or this morning about frames. I'm probably not the one to ask but I will share my experiences. 

First, I do my own lacing and plopping the piece into the frame. I bought this Point Driver from Amazon in 2021 and it is really nice to to secure the piece into the frame. I highly recommend it or something like it and surprisingly, the price has hardly changed since I bought it.

The majority of the frames I have purchased came from a subscription place that I do NOT recommend. I think it was something like $99/year and the frames were discounted and they were enough less that if I ordered 8 - 10 frames per year, I felt like the cost was worth it. It was some place that takes your order, then they have three or four places across the country that fulfill the orders. All of the places except one did excellent work but everything I got from the other place was not good at all. Corners didn't match up. The small frames that were supposed to arrive assembled were not assembled. There were little notched out places little "butterfly" looking pieces would slip into the notched out places and that's what would hold the corners together. Sometimes they didn't line up at all; sometimes they looked like a beaver had done the "notching" - just a careless mess! The last frame I ordered from them, I had to send it back and have it redone THREE times and it still wasn't right. At that point, I was done with them and didn't want to renew my annual subscription. I made sure I canceled my subscription in plenty of time. They assured me it was canceled and I would not be charged. I was. I had to dispute it through my credit card and finally got it resolved. So . . I'm not going to say their name but be careful with something like that. 

I have used Michael's (again, I just ordered the frame and did all the lacing and "installing" myself. I got frames from them once during one of their 70% off sales. I felt like even with Michael's sale, Hobby Lobby was less expensive BUT about the middle of June, I ordered two frames from Hobby Lobby. They've always been made well. The people in the framing department are very nice and helpful but those two frames were pretty pricey. Neither were large. I think one was about 8" x 9-1/2" and one was something like 7" x 10". I'm always careful to get the least expensive frames that I can live with. One was $60 and one was $75. The smaller one was actually $75 because the frame was more per inch. The foam board was extra - only about $2. I did not get glass - I rarely get glass. 

The piece I stitched for my dad's family was about 15 x 15 and I got a nicer frame and museum glass and I think I paid about $75 for that frame so I think there's been a price increase there. AND I was very disappointed in their selection in June. In our HL, they have vertical rows with the frame samples. I think there were at least three, maybe more, fewer vertical rows than when I was last in there ordering frames and most of the rows they had, only had frame samples about 2/3rds down the row where they used to be full.

So, today when I needed a frame, I went to Art to Frames. Their name is Art to Frames but the website doesn't have an "s" on the end of frames but if you type it in with the "s", it will still come up. That was kinda confusing to me.

I had heard several flosstubers recommend them so I figured I'd give it a try.

They have a great selection. The website, at least for me, seemed a bit confusing but that was just the first time I was using it. Don't be discouraged if it seems confusing because when I went back later to look for another frame, it was all very easy. I didn't want glass. I didn't want a mat and finding where to change the default on that took a second. I picked out 5 or 6 frames and it showed them with my piece in the frame. I put them all in my cart, then went upstairs and had Vince look at them with me. He likes it when he feels like he has a say in the frames. Shipping is free. I had a coupon (so sign up for whatever they offer) for $10 off $70 or $75+ purchase but my total purchase was $57 so I didn't get to use the coupon.

There is an option for "economy mode" for free shipping. That's what I got. I ordered it this morning and it says it should be here by August 6. If they use USPS, all bets are off on when it will arrive but I will post here when it arrives and how I feel about it. There was another shipping method offered and I think it was $14 and the frame should arrive by July 28 if I had chosen that method.

That's about the extent of my knowledge of frames and framing!