What I've canned this summer...

It's been a busy busy summer...Florida, Vermont, a month teaching with Bridges, wedding engagement, wedding planning, cousins cruise to the Bahamas, and finally, back home to prepare myself for another year of teaching. Of course, that means I need a distraction right? First, I made a plum jam that was so good that Mom said I could give it to her any year for Christmas or birthday and she'd be happy. Then, after checking out Glassy Mountain Chapel, I bought 1/2 bushel of peaches for $22. That turned into about 10 peaches for eating, two gallons of peaches sliced and frozen for future peach pies, and about 8-9 half-pints of peach butter.

Well, that's when Katie informed me of the $5 boxes of tomatoes at Sandy Flats Berry Patch. We drove out to find no ripe tomatoes, but a 1/2 bushel of pickling cucumbers was $6. Well, that's been turned into 9 quarts and 12 pints of pickles. Katie's recipe that started with 4 quarts of brine was responsible for all 9 quarts and 7 pints of those pickles; the other 5 were from a batch of Ball Kosher Dill mix. The key to making your brine go far...pack the cucumbers tightly. This is easier if you pack various cucumber lengths in groups.

My next adventure...tackling the 50 pounds of tomatoes I've got sitting in our utility room. They'll become sauce, whole tomatoes, and diced tomatoes. Well, back to the kitchen!

So...I haven't written in a while...

I was posting on a friend's new blog, when I realized that my google account was still linked to this crazy empty site. After over a year's hiatus, maybe I'm ready to start writing. I've certainly done lots of both teaching and knitting in the past year and a half. But my greatest accomplishment thus far is one I finished yesterday. My very first sweater! I cannot explain how cool it is to be able to control many of the steps in the production of your own clothes. Don't like the crazy elbow patch on the back of the sweater? Don't knit it. Think the yarn the pattern calls for is to scratchy? Pick a softer tweed and change the needles if you need to make the gauge work. And you struggle to finish each piece, feeling a small sense of accomplishment, but knowing that there is a lot to be done even when the knitting is over--that's unique to a sweater. Knitting the collar and weaving the pieces together took longer than I'd care to admit. So I won't. Looking back on this when I begin to knit another sweater could scare me off. Better to live in blissful forgetfulness.

But here's the finished product:


Am I proud? You bet I am.

Can't Believe I Started a Blog

So...I was thinking that starting this blog would be a great incentive to get me going on an essay that I'm writing about teaching and knitting. Still not feeling the creative juices flowing...however, I am now 45 minutes behind in my schedule for the evening's paper grading extravaganza. Better luck next time Breeze. So much for my grand plans tonight, but I'll try again tomorrow perhaps?