Distracted by crazy projects
You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the final pictures of J.'s project. We still have a little bit more to do. We could have finished it, but we kept getting distracted by other things... weeding, mowing, grocery shopping, starting dandelion jelly.
Yep, that last is really a thing. It's my new canning experiment. Supposedly it is very good and has a sort of honey taste and a pretty yellow color. We have the dandelions and I'm just sitting here waiting for produce to really start canning season, so I thought why not.
Well, this may be a one time event. Picking the 4+ cups of flowers wasn't too hard. They're kind of pretty.
But after washing them, you then need to carefully separate the yellow parts from the green parts because the green parts make the jelly bitter. To get a quart of yellow parts took hours. It might be the perfect boredom buster for the quarantine. What ended up working the best was to take my thumb nail and break open the green part which holds the petals and open it up. (I'm sure this part of the flower has a technical name, but I don't know what it is.) Then once it is open, you can more easily pull off the petals. It's sort of like taking the flower parts off of an artichoke heart if you've even eaten whole artichokes. Once you get the hang of it, it isn't hard, just tiring. And it turns your fingers black. Very attractive.
Once I had my quart of petals, I made a tea out of them, straining out the petals. The time consuming part done, I'm set to cook the jelly and put it through the canner. I should have enough to make 12 pints. I hope we like it.
L., who is also prone to diving into vaguely crazy projects successfully finished her latest one. Remember I mentioned that I finally bought a book that had been languishing in my Amazon cart for nearly a year? It's Little Traveller: 10 Small Felt Intrepid Explorers and Over 30 Tiny Travel Accessories to Sew by Simone Gooding. The minute it came, L. was entranced by it as I knew she would be. I want to make some of the friends in it, but need to order larger pieces of felt. L. was not willing to wait, so decided to make one of the accessories and give it to BlueBlue, her stuffed bear. I was pretty impressed with her final product.
In case you can't tell from the pictures, it is a lined backpack. L. has already made plans for how she would improve on this and what she will do for her next project.
Yep, that last is really a thing. It's my new canning experiment. Supposedly it is very good and has a sort of honey taste and a pretty yellow color. We have the dandelions and I'm just sitting here waiting for produce to really start canning season, so I thought why not.
Well, this may be a one time event. Picking the 4+ cups of flowers wasn't too hard. They're kind of pretty.
But after washing them, you then need to carefully separate the yellow parts from the green parts because the green parts make the jelly bitter. To get a quart of yellow parts took hours. It might be the perfect boredom buster for the quarantine. What ended up working the best was to take my thumb nail and break open the green part which holds the petals and open it up. (I'm sure this part of the flower has a technical name, but I don't know what it is.) Then once it is open, you can more easily pull off the petals. It's sort of like taking the flower parts off of an artichoke heart if you've even eaten whole artichokes. Once you get the hang of it, it isn't hard, just tiring. And it turns your fingers black. Very attractive.
Once I had my quart of petals, I made a tea out of them, straining out the petals. The time consuming part done, I'm set to cook the jelly and put it through the canner. I should have enough to make 12 pints. I hope we like it.
L., who is also prone to diving into vaguely crazy projects successfully finished her latest one. Remember I mentioned that I finally bought a book that had been languishing in my Amazon cart for nearly a year? It's Little Traveller: 10 Small Felt Intrepid Explorers and Over 30 Tiny Travel Accessories to Sew by Simone Gooding. The minute it came, L. was entranced by it as I knew she would be. I want to make some of the friends in it, but need to order larger pieces of felt. L. was not willing to wait, so decided to make one of the accessories and give it to BlueBlue, her stuffed bear. I was pretty impressed with her final product.
In case you can't tell from the pictures, it is a lined backpack. L. has already made plans for how she would improve on this and what she will do for her next project.
Comments