More Canning--Strawberries

Last week, I went strawberry picking with my sister-in-law and my nephew. I hadn't been to pick strawberries since I was a kid, but I still managed to pick almost 17 pounds of berries pretty darn quickly. (pretty darn quickly = slightly longer than the amount of time a 5-year-old will happily pick strawberries) So all week I made things with strawberries.

In the above picture:

Spreadable Fieldberries from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving: This did not quite set up properly, but is definitely thicker than syrup.

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate (also from Ball): I used my juicer to juice the lemons and I think it made the concentrate a bit clumpy (for lack of a better word) but it's still good. (Delicious with sparkling water.)

Strawberry Vanilla Jam from Food in Jars: This is pretty much syrup. I haven't actually opened a jar, but I don't have high hopes for it being very jammy. I also found it to be a little too sweet for my tastes.

This was my first canning of strawberries in any form and my first jam. While I didn't get a good set on either kind of jam, I'm still happy with my first attempt and will definitely try again. Maybe raspberries.

Rhubarb!

We have a new rhubarb plant in our garden this year (a transplant from my parents), but, since we just planted it, my dad didn't think we should pick any this year. This advice was quite upsetting to me since I have about 10 different things I want to can with it. Luckily, our neighbors brought us a giant bundle of rhubarb last week.

While it wasn't enough for all of the things I was hoping to make, it was plenty for this Victorian Barbecue Sauce.

The recipe is in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving if anyone is interested in making it. I highly recommend it. Yum.

Another Treasury by Yours Truly

Apparently I am starting to love making Treasuries. I was looking at my favorites today and noticed how many of them featured words, so I decided to make a Treasury of things with words on (which was my original title until I thought of a better one.) Then I poked around Etsy for far too long finding items to finish it up. I don't think it looks quite as good as my last Treasury, but it was more fun for me to make. (Click the link underneath if you want to look at anything more closely.)

"Words are all we have." - Samuel Beckett

Yarn Name Change

The name of my Superwash Merino Sock yarn is now Intrinsic. I never liked the name of the yarn and only used it because I couldn't think of a better one--one that wasn't just a basic description of the yarn. Now I have. And I have names for several other lines which I will hopefully be getting to very soon. (Another fingering weight one is just about ready. I just want to dye a few more skeins before I announce it.)




In other yarn news, I have several new colorways in the works. Be on the lookout for those very soon. If it cools off a bit (and I finish getting my garden planted), I should have a dye day or two this week, so get ready.

"Country" Living

We have been having trouble getting our entire backyard mowed since it's been super rainy and when it wasn't, we were out of town. (Also we live on two acres and most of that seems to be grass.) So we have this patch that is pretty tall. Yesterday, when Chris was mowing, he noticed something hidden in the grass.



A tiny fawn.

We looked it up and apparently a fawn has almost no scent, so the mother will leave it in a safe place all day in order to not attract predators to it with her scent. And I guess our backyard looked like a safe place. At least until the mowing. Now it seems that the lawn near the driveway appears safer since that's where the fawn is today.