Sour Cherries

In a mad fit of canning the other day I decided to try to can some sour cherries. I am not such a fan of adding cherries to things but I think it is the fault of the cruddy ones littering my grocery store shelves. I had a craving for cherries in the dead of winter when I was pregnant with Arlo and bought a can from the store. They were horrible. HORRIBLE. Then I got a jar from a specialty store and wow. I am a changed woman. I no longer hate cherries but have now become a slave to canning my own to guarantee yummy-ness. I think I may only love sour cherries though. And to my surprise, I discovered a sour cherry tree in my yard. I don't think it has ever produced until this year (we've lived here for four summers) and the cherries are about thirty feet in the air. I'm not sure I'm willing to risk life and limb and spend a sweaty day in the kitchen for really good cherries. Ask me again in the dead of winter.

Killer Cape

I found a pattern a while back when Fabricland was having a sale for a cape. I know, capes can be a bit dicey, but I do love a bit of costume-y glory in an outfit so I went ahead and bought the pattern. The idea was always to make a short cape rather than the floor length ones pictured on the pattern but then I decided it would be great to take some of the wall-paper felting techniques that Jessica taught at her workshop (to be blogged about later), and make a fantastic felted short cape.
Since felting requires a bit of commitment in the way of making the fabric I decided to make a mock up out of some corduroy to test the fit and length. Postmodern Hausfrau had some good tips on cape length that really helped. I started out with the hem hitting my wrist and I looked like a huge green box with legs. The pattern only called for one button at the throat but it seemed both a bit twee and also wanted to choke me to death, so I opted for four buttons. I think on the final felted one I will group two buttons together at the top to prevent any pulling in the neck area.
The only other thing I changed on the pattern was to line it. I had some super synthetic lining kicking around in my stash that was a good match colour-wise but makes the hood essentially useless, it just slides off my hair. I realise there are no pics of it with the hood up. I'm not sure if I like it or not. Somehow I feel REALLY Hobbity with the hood up and since the cape itself puts me in a potentially Hobbity, Historical Re-inactors category I want to err on the side of caution. I might try a mandarin collar version next to see how it looks.

Fritz and Liesel come to town

Dearest PH and kidlets came to visit for a week two weeks ago and I am still missing them. The thing about our visits is that we spend so much time talking that we didn't take any photos. We had a lot of fun and so did the kids but it will all be lost to our fading memories. This photo was the best I got of all our kids, Fritz, Arlo, Eden and Liesel, and it was taken as Boss Hog loaded their luggage back into the car to drive them to the airport to leave. I did get two pictures of PH and I right after this, but I refuse to post them as both of us look like boiled hell. The price of a week packing in as much kid fun in the day and way too much chit-chat into the dark of night for the mommies. Next year it is our turn to make our way east to visit them and I will spend the whole time with my camera in my hand.

Strawberries are here!

We took the kids down to Boss Hog's mom and step-dad's organic farm the other weekend (probably close to three weeks ago, truthfully) to pick strawberries and we came home with close to thirty pounds of delicious organic berries. I hadn't expected so many and even with the new enormous fridge had to go into immediate jam production. Fourteen pounds of strawberries into jam in one afternoon made for a very sticky kitchen and two very sticky little girls.

Down on the farm, Arlo was right in the berry patch stuffing everything into her mouth that she could reach. Eden however saw that she didn't have to venture into the patch to get berries. All she needed to do was to stand near Grandpa and ask repeatedly "Grandpa, do you see anything big and red?" and sure thing Grandpa would pick the best berry, pull the stem off and put it right in her mouth without her ever having to set foot in the wet (it finally rained) berry patch.

As far as the jam was concerned, I used a new method of cooking the jam to 220 degrees F, rather than using the cold plate testing method which I find tests my patience to no end. I also started looking for jam recipes that don't require extra pectin because the need to jam sometimes comes on unexpectedly with the arrival of a friend's surplus fruit (here in the Okanagan it happens pretty regularly throughout the summer). The strawberry jam worked well but when I used the 220 method for the black currant jam it was a bit stiff. Not that anyone around here minds, they eat jam like the world is coming to an end. Any jammers out there I'd love to hear your tips.

Friends of the Library

My local branch of the Okanagan Regional Library just formed a Friends of the Library Society. It is a group that raises money for extras for the library like soft chairs and new shelving. We raise the library's profile in the community and generally act as ambassadors for books. I love the library and read so much that the librarians knew my kids by name well before they were out of diapers.

Most of the people in the society are retired and everyone wants to know how to reach out to the teenagers. Then they all look at me like I would know. Just for all of you who don't know me, I haven't been a teenager for 12 years and never was much a kid with my finger on the pulse of teen trends. But I do like a graphic novel. So I made up a few posters to put up by the library to entice the youngsters. I don't know if it is working but I did see a retired farmer stop to read the posters and have a chuckle so maybe graphic novels will catch on as summer reading down on the farm.