Experimenting

 

A friend offered to give me some plastic bottles to reuse. I wasn't sure whether they were suitable for jam making, though I have bought jam in plastic bottles. I decided that the only way to know for sure was to try it. I could end up with a mucky mess and lose a spoonful of jam, but I'd know!

 I've been making rhubarb jam this morning. I washed the plastic bottle along with a couple of glass ones, put it in to the oven to heat up with the others and put the plastic lid into boiling water to heat. I put a spoonful of the cooked jam in, waited a minute, all good, so I filled the jar and put the lid on. So far, so good, though I'll leave the jar to get cold before I move it again. 

The rhubarb jam is a wonderful deep pink colour and has a nice tart taste. Here's the recipe here.

Hot Off The Press

 

The blocking press that is. Round 16 is done at last. I'm quite excited to see it spread out like this, after it has been a jumble in my lap for nearly two weeks. I probably won't manage to finish round 17 before 18 comes out, but that's no matter, I'll get there. 

Bit Boring, I'm Afraid

 

I've been working on masks again, I've just delivered another ten. Same as before, so not very exciting.

I did whip up a few tatted earrings for last Saturday's market. I even sold a pair! 

The pair on the left are muskaan's pattern, which is here. The others are my dewdrop pattern, link on the right side bar. The pair I sold were dewdrops, with red beads. 

Cape Gooseberries

 Jack is growing Cape Gooseberries in his vegetable garden. He had visions of shelves full of gooseberry jam. Alas, the bushes are not producing well. But he did manage to bring in 300g of fruit yesterday:

I opened up the little paper shells to reveal the fruit inside:

And managed to make one jar of jam:

I haven't put a label on because I'm pretty sure we'll eat it before we've forgotten what it is! 

Lagging

 

One way and another, last week was rather hectic, so I didn't get a chance to start round 16 until yesterday. I thought I might do a double 'batch' and catch up, but no, it's too complicated and time consuming for that. So I'm going to aim for five repeats a day and then try to catch up on a simpler round. 

Changing Tack

 

My plan was to tat earrings for a market on Saturday. Beaded crochet rope doesn't really lend itself to the making of earrings, but I'm told they should be good sellers at a market, so I thought I'd try tatted earrings and see what happened. Mmm. I got an urgent order for masks. Obviously a definite order that is going to be promptly paid for must take precedence over speculative market items! Whether I'll get time to make a few before Saturday remains to be seen, but the masks are done and have been delivered. 

Round 15 is done

 

For the record, I've finished round 15 of the Spring doily on schedule and am all ready for round 16 when it comes out tomorrow.