03 July, 2009

Food, Yarn, Cat

The putting up is continuing quite nicely. As I like to say it, I am squirreling away food at a pretty good pace.



The totals to date:
1 cup garlic scape pesto
1 cup traditional basil pesto
1 cup pea greens pesto
6 cups strawberry freezer jam (1 given away)
3 quarts strawberries
7 cups rhubarb
1/2 pound asparagus spears
1 pound asparagus pieces, for use in quiches, soups, and pastas
3 pints refrigerator asparagus pickles (1 given away)



This was my first ever foray into canning. The canning equipment I ordered has not yet arrived, so I was limited to a small batch of refrigerator pickles. Sterilizing the jars without proper canning equipment was interesting. The problem? How to get the sterilized jars out of the boiling water without a jar lifter, without burning oneself. To make the pickled asparagus, I used this recipe from a fantastic blog, Food in Jars.

On the agenda for today... greens. I have a whole drawer full of them... spinach, collards, kale, swiss chard. Wash, wilt, and bag.

On the knitting front... I finished another square of the Barn-Raising Quilt.



Really pretty colorway of Pagewood Farm. I think the base yarn is Chugiak and the colorway is Fruit Freeze. I bought this yarn as mill ends some time ago, so now I'm not sure. I never ended up getting my squares to the shop in time for them to be donated to the Doctors Without Borders quilt, so they are going to a different good cause.

For the past few months I've been posting about having too many WIPs. For all you knitting muggles, those are "Works in Progress." Well, lucky me, because to train for the next round of the Ravelympics (which will occur during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics), I have entered WIPS Wrestlemania 2009. The idea is to use the month of July to put the smackdown on all your WIPs so you can start with a clean slate on August 1. I won't have quite a clean slate, because of the ongoing Miles of Miters blanket. Still, it'll feel good to not have anything else on my plate come August 1. Want to join me in smacking some WIPs into shape? Check out this group on Ravelry.

And finally on the yarn front, I have an embarrassing confession. I unknowingingly did some stash excavation this week while cleaning out a closet. Look what I found:



Seven skeins of it, bought back when I was a beginning and much dumber knitter. Back when I didn't know that acrylic is made of petroleum and that cheap acrylic squeaks when you knit with it. Which I found out when I knit this. Hmmm. What to do? It's a pretty colorway. Seems boring in the photo, but it's much more heathered than the photo shows. I think I may actually try to knit this shawl. If it squeaks on me, though, it's going straight to charity.

Last but not least, Scooter hasn't been around these parts for a while, and he wanted to make an appearance.



From inside the project storage cube.


Hi, Mom. I know you're gonna yell at me in just a second, but I don't care.

2 comments:

Jeevers said...

That was me! DUH!

Anonymous said...

MISSSSTER SCOOOOOOTS