Sunday, December 21, 2008

What I've been doing since its been snowing....(pic heavy)

I've cranked out six beaded necklaces. I'm getting good, I can now play with the bead placements. Here they are:
Showing the placement:
That's 1068 beads total that had to be pre-strung before knitting.....

I have a batch of German Mustard made from Tammy's homebrewed beer. I have a couple of small jars for giving, one for Tammy and one for us. I have another bottle of beer that she had for drinking that may end up being another batch.

In the fall I usually do some type of pepper jam. I've done peach, apricot and nectarine. I wasn't in the mood to can and put it off. Thanksgiving and I find that I only have a few jars of pepper jam left and people are demanding more. We talked about it and decided to try out an orange-pepper jam. Totally cheating and bought three containers of frozen oj, three habeneros and the zest from a little 'Cutie'. I ended up with 12 jars of pepper jam for holiday gift giving and some for the shelf for the year. They kind of brought some sunshine in while it was snowing this afternoon:
Those flecks you might be able to see in the jars are the habeneros. I roast them in the toaster oven and then scrape out the seeds and the pith holding them. Still gives a lot of heat to the jam but not as much as with those also in the jam. I don't worry about the blackened part just figuring they add to the rustic-ness of the jam.

I finally put together Bailey's flower girl wall hanging. I had cross-stitched this years ago and its just been hanging out. Then I saw threadbunny's use of her cross-stitch and quilting skills combined and thought - great idea for mine! I think it came out well and will look great in a little girl's room.


Still have two hats, fingerless gloves (one for sure, two possibly) and house socks to make. The way the snow and ice are working, I'm not getting out of the house soon. So lots of knitting will get done!

An idea of how the snow has been over the last couple of days:



Over those few days, I've been throwing out bird seed for the birds. I've had layers freeze. Today I was noticing that the Mourning Doves are particularly plump, think they knew something was coming?

Stay warm & dry and hopefully also knitting up your own storm!

2 comments:

  1. Your necklaces look great!

    I've been throwing out seed for the birds, too. There's also the bird feeder, but I want to make it easy for them. They don't like any of the thistle seed feeders I've tried, but they like thistle seed! So I've been tossing that and black oil sunflower seeds.

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  2. Thanks! They really do work up fast once you have all 178 beads on the yarn you're working with.

    The birds really like the black oil sunflower seeds. I haven't gotten the thistle seed yet, but know they'd like it also. With the rat showing up, not too sure about having small birds and the seed available to pesky critter.

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