Step Into My Thimble

I’ve been making several batches of lower-sugar jams lately. I had the thrill of opening up a full-sugar version recently, and I have this to say about it: while it is truly a delicious treat, it is way more sticky than the less-sugar variety. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still eat it even if it has cat hair on the outside of the jar, I’m just sayin’.

I have a fab recipe to share. I saw an older canning guide at a friend of a friend’s a few weeks ago, which contained a recipe for blueberry marmalade. At the time I didn’t copy it down, but then I got obsessed with the idea and I started looking online for something similar. I found a UK version (link now lost) and did a little bit of altering, and I now give you this:

Blueberry-Lime-Ginger Marmalade

3-4 cups crushed blueberries (thawed ones OK, fresh are better)
4 limes
1 knob of ginger, peeled and finely grated
3 C sugar
Pomona’s Universal Pectin
6 half-pint jars, lids, rings
Water bath canner and all necessary gear

Start your canner to boil on the stove.

Wash limes well. Use a citrus rinder to peel the limes into nice long curlicues (this way is much easier than cutting the pith out of the skins, says me). Put the peels in a small pan with enough water to cover. Boil for about five minutes to soften, then drain off the water. While the limes cook, use a reamer to get every last bit of juice out of the limes, and set the juice aside.

Divide the sugar into two parts. Mix half of it with four teaspoons of pectin powder from the Pomona’s box. Make sure it’s mixed up thoroughly. Also, mix up your calcium water in a little jar following the Pomona’s instructions.

In a large pot, place blueberries, grated ginger, lime juice and peels. Stir in 3 teaspoons of calcium water, and bring it to a boil, stirring regularly. Add the sugar/pectin powder and stir to mix well. Add the second half of the sugar and return to a boil. It should give hints of setting up at this point; if not, follow the Pomona’s instructions to add a bit more sugar/pectin powder. Don’t go too crazy though, because some recipes don’t fully set up for a couple weeks after canning. Once it’s returned to a boil, you can immediately begin filling your jars.

Put them into the canner, and process for 10 minutes. Shelve it for at least a couple weeks. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a bit left in the pot after you fill your jars. Have some fresh bread nearby to try it out with. It’s really great.

Here are the unclaimed dates in the walking/destashing contest, as of July 23:

August 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31
All of Sept. except for Sept. 7

First, I finished a sweater today. Yay! This is a pullover for Maeve, in Briar Rose Fibers “Earthsong” alpaca. I love how it feels, and I love the colorway. It will be swell for the fall.

Second, I got my first dental crown today (well, the temporary at least). What a bunch of agony that was. Although I was glad I didn’t end up having a root canal too, it was a double annoyance to get the “co-pay” bill on the way out. Ouch!! Turning 35 has brought a bunch of weird hints of middle-ageness along with it, the most obvious of which will be this lovely gold tooth, and the other three I also need to get in the near future.

And third, joining Ravelry has gotten me started on stash inventorying. I never kept a huge stash (of yarn, at least) and didn’t really feel the need to quantify it in some electronic way before, even though Monica sent me a nice Excel spreadsheet way back when… but now it seems like a fun thing to do when I have time, and I am sure Ravelry is just going to keep expanding on features that will help me get the best out of my stash. So as a sidenote to that, if anybody still reads this blog regularly, I’d like to announce a little contest!

Maeve is finally acting like she might want to try walking independently sometime soon. She just started occasionally letting go of one hand while we walk with her, but she does not stand up in place without something to hold on to yet. I personally think that she will be walking by the end of September. So the contest is this: Guess a date between August 1 and September 30, sometime before now and August 1, and leave it with your name and an email address you check regularly in the comments.

It will be yours to do with what you will…pick out what you like and send the rest to someone else, or donate it to a thrift shop, or whatever. If I may entice you further, last fall I already de-stashed all the crappy yarn so this will be almost all natural fibers, some hand-dyes, several full skeins and a LOT of probably usable scraps. There is good stuff, a lot of it. So guess a date!

My little sister turns 33 today. I stayed up until the wee hours making her this lovely gift.

After I got back from Seattle about a month ago, I gave her a little souvenir I picked up at Kinokuniya, some stamps she can use for grading papers because she’s a teacher. I also showed her my new copy of “The Cute Book” by Aranzi Aronzo and she loved Frog, Mr. Tad and Mr. Pole the best. I happened to have just enough real wool felt in the scrap bag to make this for her. It’s so cute!

I also made a blueberry-peach cobbler with a delicious crusty top. Maybe I’ll post the recipe when I have a chance, it was perfect!

I’m almost done with an alpaca sweater for Maeve which is made out of Briar Rose Fibers “Earthsong” in shades of blue, green and purple. It is lovely. Blueberry picking is probably going to get in the way of finishing it by this weekend, but maybe next week it will be done. It’s certainly nowhere near alpaca sweater weather around here.

Taken on our trip to Washington. This was in a ridiculously overpriced Mediterranean restaurant in Friday Harbor. Our friend who had moved out there from Detroit was missing the fresh hummos, grape leaves, etc. that are so abundant on the east side of Michigan so we indulged him.

A few things I’ve been up to lately:

• Finally finished painting and reinstalling all of my porch window screens
• Took down, moved, and put back together a nice used swingset from our neighbors (my dad helped)
• Picked blueberries twice!
• Got over a particularly persistent blocked duct
• Officially gave up on Fuzzibunz diapers.

After all the hype, the FBs are not working for us anymore. I think it has to do, in part, with our terribly hard water. Fleece just isn’t the right fabric for us. Now we’re switching to Swaddlebees organic velour fitteds with Bummis SWW covers and a Joeybunz hemp insert for overnights (and still good old unbleached prefolds for daytime). The Swaddlebees, by the way, are very dad-friendly. Anybody want to buy six gently used size medium FBs with microfleece inserts in pastel shades? Fifty bucks for all six, leave a comment.