back to Blueberry Hill

We had such a great experience last year picking blueberries at Blueberry Hill down in SC while visiting friends, that we decided to repeat the experience this year.  Of course, from year to year, any kind of gardening or farming is tricky, and this year with the cooler spring, rainy summer, and recently picked bushes, we didn't have near the luck filling our baskets as last year.

Our workers started out strong, but they soon tired of having to search harder to find the ripe berries and just gave in to the call of the farm animals.

I always love watching the littlest members of the group figuring out the art of berry picking...and eating.

We did manage to get a couple of gallons between us, and plenty of snacking.

I felt incredibly fortunate to be picking berries with these lovely ladies.  We've been good friends since 4th grade, nearly 27 years now. I am blessed to live close enough to see one of them regularly (and she, or her children, pops up frequently here), but we rarely see her twin who lives in Ireland. The last time we were all together was Thanksgiving 2009, when there were 3 less babies between us.

Now we have 12 children between us, and although Paulie and Philip weren't with me for this trip, the rest of our children were reacquainted and enjoyed picking blueberries together. At the end of this month, we're planning another trip to see them before we are separated again for a while.

pillow of Force

After seeing this cross stitch on a friend's Facebook page several months ago, I knew I had to make it for Philip.  It's so perfectly him. In my mind, as soon as I saw it, I could see a throw pillow on his bed with this cross stitch on the front. 

The cross stitching was such fun, as it's a craft I so enjoyed in high school and college, but it's probably been more than a decade since I've touched any cross stitching.

Once I decided on the project, I had my work cut out for me to find an appropriate fabric to make the cross stitch into a pillow. There are many different Star Wars fabrics available, but I specifically wanted one with a Death Star on the fabric. I found 2 on etsy, one with a blue background and one with a black background.  Obviously black was the better choice, but I could only find it in a whole yard lot.  More than I wanted to spend on this project, but when the perfect fabric presents itself, what can you do? I'm sure I'll find a good way to make use of the leftover fabric! Probably another project for Philip.

You can't see it very well in these photos, but I chose piping to go around the edge of the pillow between the front and back layers. Once I decided and purchased this, I wasn't exactly sure how to sew them together with the piping laying flush to seam.  Fortunately, my grandmother came to the rescue.  I took the entire project out to her house, and she helped me assemble and sew it together correctly.  It looks great!

In the back, we decided that instead of a zipper, the easiest closure would be overlapping flaps. The pattern kind of turned out funny because of the intervals of pattern repeat, but that's just how it goes sometimes, I guess.  At least he has the entire big Death Star showcased on the back.

ocean waves

After seeing this project on Ginny's blog back in the spring, I mentally tucked it away (ok, I used Pinterest too) as something fun to do with Finn this summer. This past week, Finn and I found that we had a couple of days to ourselves.  We headed out to buy cheap vegetable oil. (Am I the only one who doesn't want to use expensive high quality food products on experiments?)

After adding our oil and examining how it floats on top of the water and discussing what might cause that, Finn decided he'd like a few more drops of food coloring in his water. It was almost a science experiment of its own just watching the dark blue food coloring drops descend through the oil with the tiny flecks of color that stayed separate from the oil but took a long time to descend.

Eventually all of the color drops made their way to the water and the wave action began.

And he watched it settle, and noted how EVERY time ALL of the blue water would separate back out from the oil.

More wave action.

Eventually he took to practically shaking the bottle, calling it a "rough and stormy sea with violent waves". We read a bit in one of our books about waves and tides, the pull of the moon, and other weather and seismological events that would cause larger waves.

When Elizabeth returned home, she was unimpressed that we decided to experiment without her.  She commented how the wave bottle when it's shaken reminded her of a lava lamp which set her mind's wheels to spinning. She found a similar project on National Geographic for Kids on using oil, water, and salt to make a lava lamp effect.

Eventually, she found that the salt dissolved into the water and the lava lamp effect would cease unless she added more salt.  She also tried adding a bit of sand to the water which gave a similar effect.

These jars still see plenty of action every day. It's funny how, in our world of amazing gadgets and gizmos, simply mixing oil and water can captivate our attention and imagination.

too many grapes

About a week and a half ago, Whole Foods ran a one-day sale on organic grapes for 99 cents a pound. If you bought a case (18 lbs), the discount dropped to about 85 cents a pound. Of course, I bought a case. After getting all of those grapes home and realizing that just fitting them into my fridge was going to pose a challenge, I gave a few pounds away, juiced some (with our veggies) over the next few days, then tried to figure out what in the world I would do with the 10+ pounds of grapes that I still had.

And so I decided to use about 8 pounds of grapes to make jelly.  I've never made grape jelly before, but my kids do like the occasional jar they've had from the store. I had some pectin on hand, and a brand new juicer, and it seemed that this would be a good use of our remaining grapes.

After washing the grapes and pulling them from the stem, they more than filled my gallon bowl.

When I finished running them through the juicer, I had roughly 2 quarts of juice. In hindsight, the juicer isn't the most efficient way of juicing that many grapes, it wastes a good deal of the juice. But it was infinitely faster than running it through the food mill.

I wasn't quite prepared for how cloudy the jelly would be.  All of the grape jelly I've seen at the store has been clear and dark.  I guess they probably filter the juice before making it into jelly.  It tastes quite wonderful though, and it took very little sugar to make it nice and sweet. I just used the instructions that came with the Pomona pectin to make this batch, using the least amount of sugar they recommended.

Christmas in July

The weather this July has been quite off this year.  Usually in NC, we bake under 90°-100° temps while begging for a bit of rain to cool things down for a few minutes.  This year, we've had temps in the uppers 70s and low 80s with rain every day for weeks on end! I guess it seems only fitting, in light of the odd weather, to be working on a Christmas quilt.

For a couple of years now, I've thought that it would be fun to have a quilt that we just pulled out at Christmas-time, to snuggle under on those chilly evenings. I didn't want it to look too Christmasy though because I might want to leave it out into January. When I found this set of fat quarters on Etsy in the Cherry Christmas line by Aneela Hoey for Moda, with it's combo of red, green, aqua, and grey, but no Santa Clauses or Christmas trees, it seemed like a perfect fit.  As an added bonus, it's from the 2012 line, thus discounted, and it has little clotheslines of woolens hanging between the winter trees. *love*

The pattern I chose is the Snuggly Bricks quilt, a tutorial I found on Pinterest. It holds the perfect amount of visual interest without taking forever to cut and piece. I did make my quilt 6 bricks wide and 10 bricks long since I had 16 fat quarters instead of the 12 she recommends. I still have 1 fat quarter and the scraps of the others remaining; I might attempt a matching quilted throw pillow at some point in the future.

This quilt marks my first attempt at hand quilting, something I've always wanted to try, but never had the nerve to tackle. I used one of those PVC pipe-style frames, and it took about 2 weeks to do the hand quilting. I definitely gained a new appreciation for the antique quilts I've seen!

For the backing, I decided to try to find a flannel sheet that would match. I actually found a set of twin flannel sheets in this gray herringbone (that's difficult to see unless you are close to the fabric) on clearance for $8! I used the fitted sheet, which was JUST big enough, for the backing, and I'm saving the flat sheet for another project.

For the binding, I left 2 inches of flannel sheet on each side of the quilt, which I trimmed to about 1.5 inches just before sewing the binding. I folded it twice and sewed a zigzag stitch all the way around.

Overall, I'm thrilled with how this quilt turned out. I really like the Cherry Christmas line; I love the warm snuggly flannel; the hand-quilting looks nice; and now it's just ready and waiting for Christmas snuggles!

Finn has been trying for a couple of weeks now to snuggle under this quilt, finished or not. He couldn't have been more pleased to finally have the go ahead for full snuggling!

{this moment} - a cuddle under the unfinished quilt

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

Yarn Along

The weather here has been quite dreary for the last few days.  It's hard to believe it's the beginning of July! Soggy and cool, it's been the perfect weather for reading and knitting.  Elizabeth and I are in the process of reading, together and separately, a couple of book.  Three Times Lucky is one of these. I've started working on some Christmas knitting, beginning with these socks. I've used this pattern several times. I've found that for the hubby's large feet, I prefer using sport weight yarn (thicker and faster) so I've edited the pattern to work for that yarn. I'll try to keep notes this time for anyone else that might want to work the pattern this way. The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Sport in Forest Heather, which is less emerald-like than this picture shows.  It's hard to get decent pictures with so much cloudy weather!

I also finished the alpaca cowl I've been working on.  It's so soft and light. It will be the perfect weight to wear this autumn!

blackberry season

I have a love/hate relationship with blackberry season.  The appearance of blackberry blossoms is one of the true first indications of spring, unlike the daffodils which can be deceiving. The blackberries usually start ripening, in this area, right around the summer equinox which means they are in full swing right around my birthday and the Fourth of July. 

And year and year, I seem to forget how, although I adore these plump bright fruits growing wild in my backyard, picking them while sweltering in the early July heat and amidst the brambles makes me glad when the jam is done and the freezer has several quarts of whole berries the season is finished for the year.

Despite my lack of love for the heat and the inevitable scratches that cover my arms, there is little I enjoy as much as a bowl full of these black beauties waiting to be made into jam. (I also find it a bit humorous how difficult it is to photograph a bowl full of blackberries. They seem to blend together with what looks like eyes staring back at me.)

And the jam, oh that jam, we will be enjoying right through the winter and early spring when the heat of early July is a faded memory.

thirty-six

Yesterday, I turned thirty-six. We spent the day relaxing, taking a hike, working in the garden, picking blackberries, canning blackberry jam, then out to dinner and a movie with Paul.  It was pleasantly normal and exceptionally special, all at the same time, if that makes sense.  However, a few days earlier, on the last night that we were all together as a family before the boys headed off to their mom's house for a couple of weeks, we partied it up right.

The kids, particularly Elizabeth, spent most of the morning in the library decorating, then forbidding me from entering.

Elizabeth spent about a month planning the things she wanted to do for my birthday, buying a present with her own money, decorating the library, and making the cake herself.

After the kids surprised me with the decorations and gifts, we headed outside to the firepit for a grilled veggie dog dinner. The skies were threatening all day, but we had just enough time to grill our veggie dogs before the rain started.

Homemade ketchup and mustard on the red picnic table makes me smile.

Before we had a chance to eat the delicious angel food cake with strawberries and fresh whipped cream that Elizabeth made, the rain started in earnest and we had to retire back to the kitchen for dessert. She cut everyone generous slices, of course, and we stuffed ourselves with a little taste of summer.

Paul outdid himself, as usual, and bought me a juicer that I'd been eyeing.  We've thoroughly enjoyed fresh juice multiple times a day ever since.  He also bought me a 5 qt cast iron stock pot for camping, along with a tripod for hanging it over the fire.  The kids were so excited about our new "witch's cauldron" and can't wait to see what "witch's brew" we concoct on our next trip.

I also received a handsome stack of lovely books, a knitting book from Elizabeth, an ice cream recipe book from all of the kids, and a lovely cookbook, Home Made Summer, that Paul knew would be a hit just from the lovely photos inside. I also received a little book that I saw on Ginny's blog. A Line A Day sounds like manageable journaling and I can't wait to look back over the years to see the previous year's entry as I'm writing.