First off, happy Bastille Day (France’s National Day) to one and all. Now, to our regularly scheduled blogging:

… Oooh boy, has it been a good week! Earlier this week I received in the mail my very first EVER paycheck for writing something: an article for a major quilting magazine! I will be able to tell you more about that in about 2 weeks. Then, yesterday (so much for Friday the 13th…hah! It is good luck Friday this time!), I got another check, this one for two projects that will be in a Lark Books publication that will come out in May 2008! I’ll share more about that next spring when we get publicity stuff, but to say that I am chuffed (to borrow some Aussie-speak, I just love that word) is a major understatement.

The funds are earmarked for paying for a five-day workshop with Carol Soderlund at ProChem, in Fall Rivers, Massachusetts. Long-time readers (thank you!) may remember that I took a 5-day intro dyeing class there with her last summer. Well, I get to take Week 2 this October, and I can’t wait. I haven’t done much dyeing since then (like one yard only!), but will do about 50 t-shirts this coming week and a bunch more in September. And I can say that if you EVER want to learn to dye fabric, take Carol’s class. She earns rave reviews from EVERYone for a reason, and your “color bible” is indeed one of those “grab when the house is on fire” items!

Been working madly on the book….. here is a wicked little tease, a photo to illustrate applique and reverse applique:

and another bit of a tease, since I won’t even tell you what it’s for!

Just a brief note today…. somewhere in catching up on various blogs I came across this link for a man who does graphic designs, book covers, posters and websites.  Honestly, the site is not very intuitive.  You have to wait for a flash opening, then a skinny line with no words or any other hints pops up.  Click on the middle of it, and the line will blink, and then you can mouse over the color bars to see Covers, Books, Web, Type, Posters and Contact.  Little circles will appear on either side of the color bar.  If you click on THOSE you will be rewarded for navigating this not-so-helpful site design with a feast of glorious, and very different designs.

I love this book cover, and this one.   Hmmm…OK, those links may take you to the same page.  Click on the third and fifth dots to the right of the vertical color band!  And the first poster I would order if he still had it…. try clicking here, it is the top dot:  here .

I’m screamingly busy working on my book, so hope to have more quilty and art-y content anon.

Hi all! I’ve been asked for my jam recipe. Glad to oblige! I do a hot-water-bath canning, following the instructions in the Ball Blue Book, which is the home canners “bible.” You can get a lot of canning supplies at www.homecanning.com, and I heartily recommend the Blue Book (which I even saw at Wal-Mart the other day!). The Basics kit at that website is a good one…. an outlay at first, but SO worth it to get the jar-grabbers, blue book, proper canning pot, etc., all at once.

I prefer Pomona’s Universal Pectin, which is usually found in health and natural food stores. I like it because you can use either honey or lower amounts of sugar, so that you taste the berries, not just “sweet.” In the box you get two packets, one of pectin and one of powdered calcium. Using their instructions, you make “calcium water” (1/2 tsp. of calcium powder per half cup of water).

Mash / chop 4 cups of berries. Place in heavy pan (I used our second-hand Le Creuset enameled iron pot on low to medium heat); add 2 tsp. calcium water and heat to boiling.

Most pectins require an equal amount of sugar, so 4 cups sugar for 4 cups berries…erg. Pomona’s has you use 3/4 to 2 cups for 4 cups of berries depending on sweetness. I used about 1 1/4 cups per recipe since the berries were nice and ripe. Measure sugar into bowl and stir in 2 tsps. pectin.

When fruit reaches boiling, stir in sugar/pectin mix. If, after mixing, it is still a little tart, add a bit more sugar. Allow to reach boiling again.

Meanwhile, have lids and rings in a saucepan of simmering water to sterilize, and boil your canning jars (do NOT re-use commercial jars–they are single-use only and can shatter if re-heated again!) also to sterilize. Just before the jam comes to a boil the second time, remove the jars from the hot water bath to ready for filling.

I set the jam pan on a hotpad next to the jars (which are set on a rack), and use a wide-mouth funnel to fill the jars to 1/4″ from the top. The proper amount of headspace is important for avoiding bacterial contamination and getting a proper vacuum seal. If the strawberry jam is foamy on top, which it usually is, take a dollop of butter on a fork and swirl it around the top to cut the foam (which looks icky but is actually OK to consume). Ladle into jars. If need be, clean drips from the top edge of the glass jar and place new lid on top, then screw down sealing ring. (You can’t re-use a lid…must have virgin rubber ring on it to get a proper seal).

Place jars in hot water bath for about 20 minutes after the water returns to a boil. The fruit in the jam will rise to the top of the jars…when you open a jar up, just stir and mix it back up.

Allow jars to cool, then remove the rings! If jam has oozed out, wipe clean. Make sure the lid “pops” and “sucks down” to make a vacuum seal (so as not to poison yourself with spoiled jam!). If the lid doesn’t seal, remove the lid, try a new one and hot-water bath again (I only had this happen once in 47 jars), or just pop that one in the fridge to use first.

That’s it!

For other jams, you can get fancy. Blueberries need an acidifier, so instead of lemon juice, try lime…yum! And the Ball Blue Book recipe for Plum jam in the “fancy jams” is heavenly. I made Shiro plum (yellow plums) with zest from Clementines and Mandarine Napoleon liqueur once…definitely not for PB&Js….. great on fresh biscuits!

Thanks for asking! In about two weeks, maybe raspberry jam!

Yep…. long time readers will remember this from last year. It is jam-making time! I loved the comment last year when someone told me they almost licked their screen!

Here is what 45 pounds of strawberries looks like (above). The past two years we have picked our own, but (big surprise!) Paul and I picked 30 of the 38 pounds, while the two boys picked 8 pounds and fussed. Well, Paul’s rotator cuff is torn (surgery in 2 weeks, and not soon enough he ways) so he can’t pick, and he agreed it was unreasonable to expect me to pick that much. Plus, we RAN OUT of 38 pounds worth of jam. OK, 38 pounds minus munchies during creation….. So thanks to Mr. Bellmore at Spears U-pick farm, he set aside four flats for me (the cost is a little more than U-pick…and I think it is worth it!!!!). They were ready Monday. Monday evening I hulled and washed the berries (for hours):

This is what 42 pounds of strawberry hulls looks like:

Then on Tuesday I made jam until I ran out of pectin (we bought more on the way to the Sea Dogs game in Portland). Then I sliced the remaining berries, minus a colander’s worth of really good, ripe ones with stems left on.

Eli, smart lad that he is, remembered when I had made chocolate dipped berries in Friday Harbor (at least 4 years ago…when he was 5!) and suggested we do it again. So we did. Alas, I let the chocolate get too hot, so they weren’t as pretty as they could be, but who cares…they tasted good! Melting the white chocolate chips was not successful, tho.

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day making up the rest of the jam. I use Pomona’s brand Universal Pectin, which is designed to use low sugar or honey. For 40+ pounds of berries, I used less than 15 pounds of sugar! That means my jam tastes like BERRIES, not sugar! The boys love it, and I love that they love it. We ended up with 42 pints, in mostly pint jars (until they ran out when I used half-pint jars, which the boys can vacuum up in a day!!!!!) There are 8 pint jars hidden in this picture, to the left of the microwave and behind the first row….

And to justify all the work, had to add one more photo of Eli surveying a year’s worth of jam: Then I had to box ’em all up and haul them down to storage in the basement. May splurge and (for the first time in 4 years) make raspberry jam later, too! Gonna let Mr. Bellmore pick them, too (well, his farm hands!).

And as an aside…totally cool: Mr. Bellmore rents his farm, for 25+ years, from the Spears family, which has owned the land since 1735 (down in Warren on Route 1, a mile up from the intersection with Route 90). When I asked about the heavenly-scented tree between the house and the farm stand, turns out it was a gift from the US Ambassador to Japan to the family…. in 1865! It isn’t supposed to grow this far north. It is now taller than the 2 story house, and Bellmore has a picture of it beside the house from the late 1800s when it was a bit taller than a man! Way cool! If I get back down there for the raspberries before I head to California, I’ll take a picture of the tree. Mr. Bellmore said he has tried to grow seedlings and cuttings, but they always get killed off, yet the big tree thrives.

as usual… a bit late and behind the curve…what else is new?

Well, for our fourth, we celebrated a tad early by going to a Sea Dogs (minor league baseball in Portland, Maine) game on July 3rd because…as my clever hubby figured out…they were having fireworks! And, the weather was actually a lot better on the 3rd than on the 4th.

I took my camera, and to my amazement tried the “night scenery” setting without a tripod and (after taking nearly 100 shots and deleting over half) ended up with some decent shots and one or two good ones, and some goofs that were actually pretty cool! Imagine what it would be like if I had taken a tripod (I was too tired, rushed and so on this year, but for sure I’ll do that next year!).

Doesn’t this one look like a neon sculpture?

And I liked this one too: