Cherries

My girls and I went to an orchard and picked cherries this past week (Ben is at camp).  No photos of the pretty orchard in the sunlight because it was enough to keep the toddler and the tween happy and safe (and then Phoebe spiked a fever that afternoon - no other symptoms and that was it, but I still felt bad that she was out in the sun that morning).

Genevieve and I pitted sour cherries to freeze while we watched Midsummer Night's Dream.  I had taken Genevieve and Ben to a local production in the park a few weeks earlier, so it was good to let the intricate language and plot wash over her again.

I also procured some bourbon and made four little jars of sour cherries in bourbon, a recipe from Marisa's book Preserving by the Pint.  I'm hoping they will be a good stand in for maraschino cherries.

Behind the cherries are several half-pints of rosemary rhubarb jam, also a recipe from Marisa, and a fabulous hostess gift.

And we ate several breakfasts of chocolate chip scones, just plain in their butteriness, with sweet cherries on the side.

Phoebe looks so gruesome when she eats cherries!

A Kitty Shirt for Phoebe

This shirt started with a green sneaker that somehow was dropped out of Phoebe's stroller on the way home from school.  I retraced our steps two days in a row and asked a downtown street sweeper, but no green sneaker materialized.  When I tracked down a pair of sneakers at the consignment store, they were pink.  Suddenly I had a vision of this exact outfit:  dark denim shorts (thanks, Aunt Mel!), pink sneakers, and sweet-faced aqua kitties on a breezy shirt.

I made the shirt the same way as last year's blue calico that matched Genevieve's. The kitties are so adorably quaint and the colors so whimsical that I couldn't even add lavender rick-rack or black hand-stitching; the kitties carried the day.

The fabric has been in my stash for years, waiting for the right little girl in the summer.  The pleasure I feel in this shirt on this girl in this summer reinforces all my saving tendencies.  What if all my saved stuff could blossom in this way after years?

"Repair, Don't Throw Away"

"To combat a throwaway consumer culture, Sweden is giving financial incentives for people to repair clothes, bicycles, appliances, and other goods, according to the World Economic Forum.  In addition to providing tax incentives for repairs, levies are being added to the manufacture of new appliances based on the amount of chemicals used.  More people paying for repairs should mean more people in the labor force and more local jobs." - quote from The Mennonite May 2017, which is summarizing from Christian Century

My purse which I love, but it is vinyl and the corners are wearing off; I took a blue Sharpie to the worn corners.  A stopgap while I shop for a new purse (hopefully not vinyl).

 A Moses basket whose handles were fraying off the basket.  I darned the handles back on to the basket with twine.

 A tiny hole in our plastic watering can melted by a neighbor's cigarette cinder; I thought it was worth trying to fix with a small piece of duct tape inside and out.  The fix has been holding for months.

My granny shopping cart had a frayed back pocket.  I handsewed some patches over it so important
things (wallet! phone!) wouldn't slip out.

I would love to see incentives for repairs!  It's hard to find repair shops for anything these days because so many people say it's cheaper to buy a new one.  Do you try your hand at fixing things or know a fix-it genius?

Just a New Handtowel

Because an old one got too stained to look good and because Phoebe can't pull this one off the oven handle.  Hurray for a small, discrete task where I can exercise my creativity!  And it's crossed off the to-do list unlike various projects (we need to replace our boiler this summer, for one) and emotional burdens that we pick up every morning and try to lay down at night.  Or maybe that's just me.

Strawberry Jam Starts the Season

I took my children strawberry-picking for the first time ever.  We went to the farm where I went on a field trip as a first-grader, when I had a young, enthusiastic teacher with a strawberry farm.  The only activity I remember was using fresh strawberries as crayons to draw pictures.  My kids have begged for that "story" (memory fragment, really) over and over.  Do you embellish memory fragments like that into real stories for youngsters?

Anyway, we picked 15 pounds of strawberries ($1.75 a pound) while Phoebe sat in a wagon nearby with a bowl of strawberries.  I made strawberry freezer jam, for the first time ever using Pomona's Pectin which is a lower-sugar variety.  We'll see if we like it.

The process was easy and the jel was good before the jars went to the freezer.  I also froze some whole berries - an idea from a friend at the berry patch.  She said her kids like to eat them straight from the freezer as snacks.  Then I used two cups of strawberries to make strawberry rhubarb jam - the rhubarb provides the thickness, the jel, and I used vanilla sugar for a little something special.

The strawberry rhubarb jam required my canning gear, so the preserving season is officially begun!

A few weeks ago, I did an inventory of my freezer and canning shelves so I could make goals for this year's preserving.  Cherries will be up next, I think, followed closely by beets.  And blueberries!  Thank you, dear God, for all this wonderful food.

Funny Fabric on the Ironing Board

My commercial ironing board cover was ironed to literal shreds.  I had a length of funny fabric in my stash that I bought just because I loved it. It's got scenes of a retro family and their pets grooming themselves for the day.  Would this make a shower curtain?  Toiletry bag?  Not sure how other people would use this fabric, but I made a double-sided ironing board cover.  Hopefully I can flip it and get more use out of it.

I used a slightly different method from previous covers I've made.  I did trace my old cover, but I added two sets of ties to the back of the new cover and elastic at the top and bottom.  One method I saw had you make a casing for elastic the entire way around the ironing board cover.  I didn't want to use that much elastic, nor did I feel like inching a piece of elastic through such a tortuously long casing.

In the end, my new cover was a wee bit short and required some diaper pins in the back to keep it in place.  I thought I was cutting generously when I traced the old cover, but oh well.  This is get-er-done-and-functional sewing.  The fabric happens to make me giggle, too.

More giggles. They pounced on the jeans legs I had cut off.  Otherwise, I have no explanation.

Here, Ben made "a guy" for Phoebe out of her duplo blocks and she kissed him.

And Then My Checkbook Cover Broke

I had never liked that cheap vinyl thing anyway.

I dug through my free upholstery samples and thought I could make a new cover.

I simply traced around the old old one, held the vinyl together tightly while I sewed, and bingo!  a new cover in about 20 minutes.  I did use a sewing machine needle that I have set aside for sewing on paper.

There's a pocket for the debit card that accesses the account.

There's a binder clip to keep the checks for deposit handy.

I'm very pleased with its looks and functionality.