What's new around here?  The State Fair has come and gone and Dave and I went twice.  We used the heck out of our Blue Ribbon Coupon Book on our first visit.  Our second trip was on the very last day with my parents and Freya and John.  As we boarded our bus to the fair, passengers coming back gave us their books so Mom and Dad had coupons to use.  Our favorite food item this year had to be the Reuben bites from O'Gara's.  Num num!

 We visited the Creative Activities Building because I had knitting and Freya had scrap booking exhibited.  I am proud to say I entered 9 things and got ribbons on 5 of them and 2 of those were blue!  As my dad would say, "The sin of pride."  Here is my finished 3 piece baby set that won the top knitted item prize at the Washington County Fair.

 Now that my fair deadlines have passed for the year, I am working on baby deadlines.  I've had my eye on this pattern for some time.  Can you see the owls?  I am currently knitting a bunch of these for family babies.  My niece Becky is expecting a boy so this sweater will go to her with the blue stitching on the buttons and eyes.  My cousin Anna is expecting a girl and will receive this same sweater but with pink thread for buttons and eyes.  My cousin Britt is expecting a baby but they are not learning the sex prior to the birth so I am torn between yellow and teal thread.  The sweater itself is knit from a gender neutral sea foam teal/blue. 

 Dave and I attended the wedding of our nephew held on the terrace of the Stillwater Public Library.  I was dubious when I read the location on the invitation but it was bee-YEW-tiful!  Who knew that was up there?  What a great facility and you'd think you were in Prague by all the church spires!  This was the first small town library I'd ever seen that had a parking ramp beneath it!

 We also attended the first Gopher football game of the year last Thursday with Dave's dad.  The weather cooperated for the most part and we creamed Eastern Illinois.  I had fun but I have a hard time paying attention at large sporting events like this.  I start looking around at the cheerleaders and the band and I'm watching what Goldy is doing and....oh wait, we're playing again!

The garden has been moderately successful this year but we had such a late start and a cool and wet season so far.  I am already making plans for next year's changes.  I have been very pleased with our cherry tomatoes.  I started them from seed and planted them in a large pot which I plan to bring indoors when the frost comes.  We have 1 regular tomato plant and 1 roma tomato plant and they're slowly ripening.  The green beans might have a second round of produce and our eggplants look like they might produce something before the season is over.  We have yet to produce a single zucchini and have 3 runt cucumbers I hope will get bigger.  There are 3 spaghetti squash developing on the vine and I don't think we're going to get any butternut squash. 

Dave's parents always have an abundance of tomatoes and I've brought home 2 loads from them already.  I did my first day of canning this year today and boy are my dogs barking from all the standing in the kitchen.  I wound up with 6 quarts of tomato sauce and 6 pints of salsa at the end of the day.  After slowly emptying the jars all year, it is nice to be filling them up and storing them for winter.  Last year I made dozens and dozens of jars of salsa because it was the first thing I learned how to can.  Then I learned I could just reduce down and strain gallons of tomatoes and can it as sauce to use as a cooking base.  We gave away quite a few pints of salsa and ate and cooked with it and managed to use it all up but I wished I'd canned way more plain sauce. There were quite a few bitterly cold days that we weathered with velvety tomato soup made out of the tomato sauce.  I have next weekend off too and I'm hoping between our garden and Dave's parents that we'll have another truckload to fool around with.  I want to try canning marinara and pasta sauce if I have a surplus of plain sauce.  I am also going to try canning applesauce when the apples are ready.  More on that later.