Syrup, Socks and Sad Jelly Moulds

We missed the first run of sap collecting and maple syrup making because it was a warm spell in early February.   We've found that there is only a small window of a couple of weeks for our spiles when we tap the trees, before they start healing up and the sap flow is diminished or stopped completely.  It was worse when we took advantage of an early warm spell a few years ago, so we waited.   Now people are saying that the maple sap season could end much earlier than expected.  Still, we got our first trees tapped a week ago and had over 100 litres to boil last weekend.   

With our set up, the old Franklin stove over the fire pit and 2 roasting pans, 1 to heat the sap and the other to reduce it, it's about the minimum we can do to have a reasonable batch of syrup to finish.   Hubby gets it most of the way and then I finish the syrup in the kitchen.  This way I can be more accurate with getting the syrup to the desired temperature - which is 219 F.  This is about 66% sugar content, and is very shelf stable.   Then I need to filter/strain the syrup to get out any ash and other icky things, re-heat it

to boiling, and put it into canning jars.   This takes a few hours.  It was a bit risky this time as not  one but both of my candy thermometers decided to not calibrate and wouldn't show a temperature above the boiling point.    I ended up sticking my meat thermometer in and figured out how to set it for the desired temperature and boy,  that instant read probe showed 217F.   It was only a few more minutes boiling until we got to the right temperature.  Once I'd done the filtering and canning, and cleaned up, and had my cup of celebratory tea, I tossed both of those uncooperative thermometers out.   We have just over 2.25 litres of syrup from this batch.

I spun some yarn with mill ends of a merino/cashmere/silk/nylon blend.  Most of them were fine but there were a bunch that needed to be re-processed by hand.   Mostly, the yarn was really nice, but a few of those re-processed bits were harder to spin, so there were a few uneven bits in the yarn.   However, it was between a sock weight and a sport weight after dyeing, so I tried it on the sock machine.  It was a little iffy in a couple of places, but mostly this was a really nice pair of socks to machine knit.   They are definitely a little heavier than I like, but next time I'll aim for a slightly skinnier yarn and I'll take more care to make sure that my roving or rolags are more carefully prepared.  Or  I'll just use commercially prepared wool and skip that first step completely :)

The kitchen is almost finished after 13 years.   The walls got painted 2 weeks ago.   I'm not sure I like the colour I chose.  If I'd gone with the first colour it would have been fine, but I switched last minute and it's a lot cooler of a colour than I thought.  It does go well with the cabinets though.   I had taken down m copper jelly mould collection to store it before painting.  This was 3 or 4 years ago...  I went to put them up and found 3 of them damaged.  Something had dripped on them and corroded the metal.  It was weird because there was a puddle of it in the rose mould which was gummy like a silicone or a weird dry wall compound, but we couldn't figure out how they would have come in contact with anything while stored in a box. 

  I'm pretty sad about the melon mould because that was one which makes very Victorian shaped deserts. That one and the one with the roses are designs I've not often seen so they'll be more difficult to replace.   The dots and lines one is a duplicate that I got because  a) it was $2  and b) was a very red copper rather than the gold copper that was already in the collection.  I've seen more of those around.   Most of our thrift stores have been shut down, which was my main places to find them.   I've seen a few in antique and vintage stalls, but they are much more expensive.

Otherwise -  I made 3 pair of socks for my daughter for her tiny, skinny feet and another pair for her husband who had dramatically larger feet.  I helped prep and run a craft session at the museum for a whack-load of kids.   We were told that there could be 150 kids or more.  Luckly there were just half that amount, which was plenty to do a craft with in the just under 4 hours we were allotted.  I saw a flock of swans overhead on my way home from Westfield, although I was unable to get a photo because they were flying so very quickly.  February has flown by.  While the weather hasn't been horridly cold or miserable, I'm looking forward to warmer temperatures and yearning a bit for my garden.