The Best of Intentions

Mine that is!  I had intended that this weekend should be a fibre weekend.  I was going to do a sample rinsing of the solar dye vats.  I was going to wind a warp and at least start dressing the loom.   I was going to ply all the partial bobbins left over from the Stanley Cup spinning project.   I also wanted to redraft my husbands doublet pattern and get it started and had been musing about a new late period kirtle for myself. 

Instead, on Saturday, we picked up a half bushel of green beans, a half bushel of peaches and a half bushel of plum tomatoes.  The beans went into the freezer that night.  Sunday morning I made peach jam.  I was pretty disappointed that most of the peaches were rotting from the inside out.  I got one batch of jam from the 1/2 bushel and that was only because I had 3 peaches ripe on the counter to add!   Then we popped out to do a bit of antiquing.  At one antique mall,  lots of small booths housed in a large building, I found a beautiful butter mould.   I rather like butter moulds.  It was a good price but I neither brought it with me while I looked nor remembered which booth I saw it in, so it didn't come home with me.   I usually look for antique weaving and spinning tools but there were none to be had that day.

 On the way home, we stopped for canning jars and a jar lifter.   Normally I just freeze the tomatoes, either with or without their skins.  However, with the chooks in the freezer, the freezer is starting to fill.  Add to that the time it takes for frozen tomatoes to thaw, even in the saucepan, I decided to drag out the water bath canner.   Luckily I bought mainly 500 ml jars, since I'd forgotten how small the canner actually is.  The 1 lt. jars are too tall for it.   There was a pressure canner on sale, which I almost indulged in, but it's not really necessary for tomatoes, nor did I budget for it.   The half bushel of tomatoes gave me 20, 500 ml jars plus about 1.5 - 2 jars left, which I decided was not enough to bother keeping the canner boiling for another 45 minutes.  We'll eat them for dinner instead.

The one sunflower in my garden, planted by birds I'm sure, has a huge sagging head.  These two little extras brightened up the morning today!  Even better is that I saw a honey bee on it.  They've been far and few between this year, so if they are making a comeback, it's an awesome development.

Fibre activities are definitely in the works for this week though!