I don’t know why, but I wanted to make jam.  I say I don’t know why because I’ve never made jam before.  My mother never made jam.  I don’t eat a lot of jam.  Now in London, we did have some delicious jam and scones, and when we came back, we had a couple of afternoon teas at Google where I made scones and we had jam we brought back from London.  I’ve read a couple of blogs where people have been making jams.  We also had a lot of fruit from our CSA and some vendors have been offering some good deals on fruit at the Farmers’ Market.  I guess everything just combined to make the perfect storm for jam making at Casa Napier.

We started by measuring out all our fruit to figure out what kind of jam we were going to make, and how much.  The oven was put into use for storing our berries, due to our serious lack of counter space.  It was off, but a handy place to keep our fruit out of the way.

We used this great recipe/tutorial.  It was well put together and easy to understand.  I highly recommend!  Last weekend we collected all our supplies and this weekend we were ready to jam.

Bill was an invaluable partner in the jam making.  He concentrated on sterilizing the jars and lids, and processing the jars in the boiling water bath.  I focused on the fruit part.  I think it made it a lot easier.  I feel like it would have been a lot for one person to do, especially for a first timer.  And it was fun to have company.  You can see the different pots going, and after that first batch of jam, we started doing two at a time.

It took us a little over four hours, but we ended up with 19 jars of jam.  We did two full batches, one of strawberry and one of triple berry (straw, rasp and black berry) and two half batches of raspberry and blackberry.  From the samples I had while testing the consistency, they seem like they will be very good. I guess we should open up a jar and try some.  For now, I’m just enjoying staring at them on the counter.

This happy dance started last Sunday. I went to Joanne to buy some supplies for a couple of projects. I had coupons, but most of my stuff was already on sale. I bought duck cloth and cotton fabric for some fabric boxes, more duck cloth for some bean bags, and fusible interfacing for some bags and to make sure I had some on hand. The interfacing wasn’t on sale so I was able to use my coupon.

I got to the cutting table and had 16 people in front of me. What to do, what to do… Not many options so I went with looking at pattern books. As it turns out, simplicity patterns were 5 for $5 and I found 5 that I liked. You can never have too many patterns. Once my fabric was cut, I checked out and would you believe that I saved $103? I did, I did!!!!!  You are probably wondering how much I spent to save so much.  I spent $36.  Yup, I saved almost three times what I spent.  The patterns were a big chunk of my savings and a great deal!

Doing the happy dance…

On Thursday, I started a project with my sale duck cloth.  I have been meaning to make fabric boxes to store some blurays and wii stuff on our tv entertainment center.  There’s this great tutorial on All Buttoned Up that I’ve been using.  I finished my first box. I’m always amazed when something actually turns out how I want it to turn out.  Especially on the first try.  The box actually fits my blurays.

Doing the happy dance…

I made a couple of additions to the tutorial.  I stitched in the ditch a little on the side seams of the boxes so that when I slid in my interfacing, they would stay in place.  I’m able to slide them into a little pocket. Then I stitched in the ditch along the bottom seams to keep everything in place.  Just about two inches. And instead of interfacing, I used manilla folders to line my boxes.  We have lots of manilla folders lying around.  I don’t plan on these boxes being washable.  Hence my using manilla folders.  I didn’t prewash my duck cloth, and I’m pretty sure it would still shrink even if I had prewashed it.  I’ll vacuum them if they get dusty.

One box down, five more to go.

There’s nothing like an impending houseguest to force you to get your shit together.  My brother-in-law was arriving for a visit last Sunday so I finally got off my butt and got the house picked up and cleaned.  Bill helped of course, but I had made headway before he got home.  The finishing touch was flowers from the farmers market.  I love fresh flowers in the house.

We had a nice visit with Steve.  It was a short trip, but nice to catch up.  We chatted and ate and watched a movie.  Steve slept. I think he got some good rest while he was here.  He brought his iPad with so I got to play.  It’s beautiful and shiny and fun, and I want one, but I’m not sure how I would use it.  I keep telling Bill that if we had one, I would figure out uses for it, but he’s not really going for it.  It’s on the heavier side so I can’t see holding it for long periods for reading or game playing.  A stand is a must.

Unfortunately for Steve, we had a heat wave.  95 plus degrees for three days.  It really zaps your energy.  That might account for all the sleeping Steve did.  The house stayed relatively cool except for one day.  I turned the air on, but it was too hot for it to really make a difference.  Bad hostess.  Steve was a good sport though and didn’t complain.

Now things are relatively back to normal at Casa Napier.  The housekeeper has been found, the laundress is laundering.  The grocery shopper needs to shop, but I’m making the grocery list.

In the midst of all of this, I started a new project with some fabulous yarn!  It was shipped from A Good Yarn in Sarasota, FL.  It’s a colorway unique to the store.  You can read about it here.  Anyway, I am knitting it up into a Whippoorwill shawl (rav link) and I think it’s lovely.

the housekeeper is nowhere to be found.  We are immensely relieved that the laundress ended her work stoppage voluntarily. The husband did pony up some cash for a few skeins of yarn, but that was a small price to pay for clean undies.  As for the housekeeper, apparently she would rather walk around the neighborhood and smell the…

roses.

Or she would rather play with fabric squares…

The husband sees the housekeeper and she behaves as if she owns the house, sitting on the couch knitting.  In the meantime, we’re up to our eyeballs in dust and animal hair tumbleweeds. What is going on in this house?  Sabrina thinks we’d better get it figured out ASAP.

A cute little kitty can’t live in these kinds of conditions.

And the strange thing is, she doesn’t have any demands that need to be met before she agrees to return to work.  She just would rather play with soft, luscious yarn instead of dirty, smelly clothes.

She would rather work on an alpaca scarf (rav link) that she doesn’t need in mid-August.

Or she would rather work on a little pixie hat (rav link) for a friend who’s expecting a little girl next month.

Or she’d rather work on a new comfy cardi (rav link) for those cool California evenings.

She could “demand” more yarn, but the husband of the house would quickly agree and then our laundress would have to return to the stinky clothes.  There is lots of yarn to request.  Like some Sweet Georgia merino/silk dk, or some Classic Elite Ariosa for another yummy scarf (rav link).  Not that she’s been looking because just last month she said, “no more yarn!”  What to do, what to do…

I have a feeling that our laundress will return to work in the near future.  Like when she realizes she has no clean workout clothes for tomorrow.

One of the things that I think makes for a happy sewist, and probably a happy quilter, is the ability to live with imperfections. Imperfections are part of crafting and tend to add character to the final product.  That said, mistakes are another thing.  Some mistakes can be lived with, others have to be corrected.  My squares NOT lining up well in the top photo are an example of mistakes that I couldn’t live with.  I am a beginning quilter, and I don’t expect that every corner will line up perfectly, but this was not within my tolerances.  I took my time cutting the squares, I did a pretty good job with my quarter inch seams, so why were my squares off?  I measured them, and when they should have been 4 inches, they were all over the place.  Yuck!  I decided to try an experiment and start from the bottom of my quilt and remeasure and trim my pairs before finishing the piecing and before I sewed two rows together.

Those are my trimmings.  Doesn’t look like much right?  It’s amazing the problems they caused.

My squares are lining up a lot better now!  A lot better!  I do have some that aren’t perfect, but as I started this blog, imperfections are okay.  I’m not an experienced quilter so I don’t expect it to look professional.  If the rest of the quilt turns out like the bottom photo though, I will be VERY happy.

Now let’s not talk about how much longer this process is going to take me.  And I’m not even gonna think about what to do with the section I’ve  already done.  I think it is going to involve my friend the seam ripper.

Two weeks ago, Bill and I hopped a plane to my hometown, Chicago.  The trip was mainly to visit my dad, but of course we had to see the Cubs and stuff our faces with pizza.  Our first adventure was to see a taping of the radio show “wait, wait…don’t tell me.”  Bill’s a big fan of the show and we were able to get tickets.  I found it to be very funny and entertaining.

Friday we headed to the Cubs game.  It was not our best trip to Wrigley Field, I’m sad to say.  It was too hot and humid for my Grandma so she wasn’t able to go to the game with us.  It was for the best though, because we had the worst seats I’ve ever had in 35 years of going to that ballpark. The construction of Wrigley Field lends itself to some obstructed view seats.  However, I strongly feel that obstructed view seats should be sold as obstructed view seats.  I paid $36 plus a bunch of taxes and fees and service charges to NOT be able to see the batter.   Ok, I’m exaggerating because I could see the batter by leaning forward and to my right.  It was very comfortable, as I’m sure you can imagine.  So we sat in empty seats to our right until those people showed up.  Then I sat in my seat for about two innings until the people in front of us couldn’t handle the heat anymore and left.  We stayed for the whole game and the Cubs won, but it was only an okay afternoon.

After the game, we picked up my Grandma and met up with all my aunts and uncles and one of my cousins.  It was a nice visit as I haven’t seen them in probably four or five years.  Yeesh…  We caught up over pizza and pop and homemade cupcakes with ice cream.

On Saturday, Bill and I hopped on another plane to St. Paul, MN, to attend the wedding of a friend from college.  It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, held in an old library.  The bride looked stunning and so happy!  They played a slide show and showed a photo of the two of us from college and that made me realize that she and I met 17 years ago!

We actually got to visit a little bit at the reception and of course we met her new husband.  It was a really wonderful evening and I’m so glad that we went.  Bill enjoyed himself too, but it could be that he was riding the high of having had a beer that was “better than Guinness.”

Sunday morning, Bill and I hopped a plane back to Chicago. Dad picked us up at the airport and we headed to the Connie’s for pizza.  Yummy!!  The humidity broke and it was a very pleasant day so our next stop was the lake.  We parked right by Buckingham Fountain and walked in a northerly direction along Lake Michigan.  We skipped Navy Pier, and continued until we found the Milton L. Olive III Park.  It’s a park dedicated to Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Milton L. Olive III.  It was worth the walk as we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the city.

We walked back to the car along Michigan Avenue, stopping at the Blackhawks Store on the way.  We wanted to follow the helicopter that was shooting Transformers III on the river, but we didn’t have enough time on the meter.

We did make time to stop for photos at the bean in Millennium Park.  Despite the pleasant temperatures, we were ready for liquid refreshment and a rest.

Monday, we relaxed and accompanied my dad on a trip to the dentist.  And on Tuesday we headed home.  It was a pretty jam packed visit.

I struggled through today.  When you roll over in the middle of the night and your sore butt muscles wake you up, you know it’s going to be a rough day.  Yesterday, I resumed my class at the gym which I’ve been away from for about a month due to travel and a cold.  I was surprised it had been that long, but the calendar doesn’t lie.  I took it easy, cut the weight on my barbell, but I am moving like a 90 year old woman.  Actually, that is probably an insult to 90 year olds.  My legs are not my friends.  As painful as it is to move my bottom half, in a weird way it feels kinda good to get those muscles working again.

Despite my soreness, I spent the afternoon laying out a quilt.  It wasn’t easy scooting around on the floor, but I’m pretty happy with how the quilt looks so far.  When dealing with so many different fabrics, I couldn’t think of any other way to make sure that the fabrics got “evenly” distributed.

The supervisor approves.

Then she had to mug it up for the camera.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, Bill and I went to see Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band at the Mountain Winery. It’s a nice intimate venue not far from our house.  I have to admit, I wasn’t super excited for the concert.  I knew it would be a nice evening, but that was the extent of my excitement.  Well, his All-Starr Band was really an All-Star Band.  Edgar Winter sang Free Ride which was my favorite song to play when I was in the Penn Band.  And then, Richard Page sang Kyrie which is my favorite 80s song.  Favorite.

Rick Derringer sang Hang on Sloopy, Gary Wright sang Dream Weaver, Wally Palmar sang What I Like About You…  Ringo sang, played drums.  It was pretty cool.  And can I say that Ringo looks great at 70.  (He was moving way better than I was.)

Now that really was enough excitement for one day.