We be Jammin

Seems I can never remember to blog unless Spidey comments so here goes.

Last friday I got a call from my fellow Red Hat group that they were meeting for breakfast the following day at Cracker Barrel. I was, as usual, feeling oppressed by the amount of work I need to accomplish, but decided that I really could use the break and it is difficult enough for me to keep my friends so I decided to go. I am so used to my other friends driving me to these events that I was not really certain where I was going but had a fair idea of the locale. I left myself with plenty of time and got their almost an hour early. Just enough time to do the shopping I was planning for afterwards.

There were 6 of us in attendance and we had a lovely time. It is sort of nice being the youngster at the table. I was bemoaning my small crop of raspberries commenting that I had hoped to make raspberry jam for Maddie to take with her to college since it is her favorite and Jan who was sitting across from me asked if I was interested in picking from her patch. Her husband had picked 8 quarts the day before and they were leaving town. I jumped at the chance and planned on picking on the following tuesday.

Jan called me shortly after I got home and said there were lots of berries ripe now and if I liked I could come today and pick and then come back on tuesday. I grabbed containers and Maddie and off we went. Her husband even helped us pick and we quickly filled up a couple quarts, actually almost three, of berries. I brought them home, cleaned them and measured them out for jam batches. After I seeded a portion of them we had enough for 1 batch of jam and enough juice for the start of a pie.

Four o clock rolled around and suddenly I realized that it was Saturday and that I had totally missed my friend Susan's daughter's graduation party. I felt terrible. The party was in Janesville and had ended at 3:00 so I really missed it. I sent her an apology e-mail, but still have not heard back from her. I am a little afraid to call. I think she will understand, but she is a little unpredictable sometimes. I might get brave enough this afternoon.

all my spare time has been spend making felt balls. Dying wool, rolling balls, needling balls, felting balls, drying balls and over again. My whole living room is filled with wool.

Tuesday Maddie and I went out to pick again and the patch was loaded with berries. We spent well over an hour picking and came home with a couple gallons of berries. I made a cold rasperry glace pie and prepared enough berries for three more batches of jam. Froze them.

Yesterday Maddie and I made the jam. It was nice to just pull the bags out of the freezer, add the sugar and sure jell and fill the the jars, but it still took most of the day. I had reg and low sugar sure jell and I need to remember to just stick with the low sugar. The berry flavor is so much better even if the yield is lower.

I ran out of cute little half pint jars and did the last two batches in plain old pints. I think those are the ones I will send with Maddie to school. They will take up less space... especially as empty jars which wont take too long at the rate she eats Jam. I think she thinks she is Alice at the tea party 24/7... She adores toast and jam.

Today back at the felt balls. last night Puck and I set up a drying screen in the basement for the balls. I hope it works better than leaving them on the porch. They take a couple weeks to dry out there when the humidity is high. I am hoping that the dehumidifier in the basement will help with the drying speed.

We had a little bit of rain one of the days this week and some more flooding in the basement. Good thing Maddie and I were down there when it started and could stay on top of the flooding. There were a few surprise leaks that we still need to address. Oh well such is life in an old home.

That about covers the week.