Month: September 2024

So the weather is hot, middle of summer hot, which is not the best. Usually this time of year is in the low 70s, which is comfortable for doing outside projects. Instead we have mid 80s and wildfire smoke aloft. And sometimes less aloft which is a problem… Parts of the sky turn white and orange and everything is hazy up high and near the ground. Even the moon was orange last night like something out of a Halloween story.

So I’m not contributing much to the outdoor projects at the moment. Wildfire smoke and RA aren’t a great combination.

I have a good start on my book stacks though! I re-read The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, plus The Zero Waste Life, The Year of Cozy and The Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home. Some of these, as is probably obvious are project books.

From The Year of Cozy I finally tried both the marshmallow recipe and the flavored honey recipe. Making marshmallows with honey is a success! Doing a full recipe is way too many, so I’ll be doing half recipes, but it worked, which is awesome. And while it was some effort, it wasn’t a problematic amount of effort, so that will be a ‘special occasion’ treat, but hey, I can make them!, and that’s huge. The flavored honey is a test run to see if I can make it as gifts. I’m letting it sit and absorb the flavor for a week or two before testing it. Hopefully it works!

Re-reading The Zero Waste Life was also interesting. It’s been a little while since I first read it, a year?, six months?, and it’s interesting to see what I’ve managed to improve on. Sometimes it feels like I’m not getting anywhere but comparing the suggestions to where I am now with my projects and systems I’m not doing too bad! Still a ways to go though. Some of the big ones are just stepping up the canning. If we get 200 lb of produce and it’s a year supply it’s realistically going in the freezer or in a canning jar in order to last that year. And if it’s in the freezer that probably means ziploc quart bags. And that means plastic that’s going to be disposed of. Yes, they can be washed a few times, but it doesn’t work well and they tear and even with the best efforts they end up in the trash. Plus it’s plastic, and wow does science seem to suggest plastic is the leaded gasoline of our generation in addition to the goal of not creating trash that hangs around for centuries.

Freezing in glass containers is on the table, but that means having enough containers. Doing say, a few quarts of chickpeas I cooked in quart jars to have ready for salads, is definitely reasonable. Doing 90 lb of blueberries in one weekend, less so. Not to mention it needs to be something that won’t turn into a rock or it will be very hard to get it back out of said container. But you can can them, and I found a post from someone from an Extension office saying a simple syrup with honey is valid for canning. So the plan is to do a trial batch next year. We’re going to need more shelves though. We have a nice set of shelves for canned goods, but not enough for a-year’s-supply-of-most-produce-for-a-family-of-5 number of shelves.

And The Spellshop is amazing. It’s happy and interesting and the circumstances mirror enough of my 2020/2021 experience it helps with a sort of background healing of some of that emotional trauma. Bad Things happened, we had a front row seat to them, and then we packed up everything we could and had a hard, terrifying trip and then we were back in my childhood home. It’s our home now, and I’ve always loved it and I love being here but what brought us here involves Emotionally Complex Memories… especially since the rest of the universe is of the opinion that None of That Happened (either 2020 or the first bit of 2021). And being without a functional body or immune system things didn’t Go Back to Normal for us in 2021/2022 so yeah… emotionally complex memories/thoughts.

The wildfire smoke is (hopefully!) headed another way next week and today, the official first day of fall, a big front should switch us from nearly 90 degrees back to barely 70 degrees but it should be. Walking outside has felt like standing in a bizarre oven this month, it feels wrong and horrible and terrifying. Hopefully we get a break for a bit.

I’m ready for fall, canning happened when the farms’ tomatoes finally, finally, finally came ripe. We now have shelves of whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, pickles, and pickled hot peppers. I think that’s my limit. Next year we’ll add applesauce and learn to pressure can vegetables and can fruit in light honey syrup. And can the jam instead of freezing the fruit (though maybe I’ll drag the frozen fruit out this winter and ‘catch up’).

Sweaters are also done! These are TinCanKnits Trek pattern but converted to be cardigans. The tiniest one will have buttons, when she’s a little older and less likely to taste test them. I have them waiting, they’re silver heart buttons. This was my first time steeking and it went great! I’m doing this every time now! I thought the kids would like cardigans they can thrown on when it’s cold out or they’re playing in the basement. Hopefully they like them!

Next up is the Christmas knitting! I’m hopefully going to make three cowls (Tincanknits Compass pattern) and two pairs of convertible gloves/mittens for the boys. My other Christmas gift crafts will (hopefully!) be embroidered bookmarks (hopefully 6 of these? boys, husband, parents, best friend…). And also my food-as-gifts experiments. Vanilla bean infused honey was amazing so that’s going to be one (parents) and spicy honey (husband) and rosemary honey (parents). Flavored vinegar is also a planned one, though I haven’t tried it yet. Spiced and sweet nuts and candy are also ideas (for husband and maybe parents, we’ll see what works for people?).

Oh and I also finished the softbook for the tiniest one for Christmas. At least the sewing is done. I’m going to embroider her name and ‘from mom’ on the back too.

I’m ready for fall and winter and holidays and consistent plans and schedules. It was a good and bad, hard and productive, and hard to predict summer. We did a lot of great things (a drive in movie for the boys and their dad! I got to go to an antique/thrift store and more than one book store!) and got lots of stuff done (the moldy trees are gone, house changes make things easier/cozier/less-RA-setting-off, we canned-all-the-things) and I got back things I haven’t managed for a few years (sewing, canning, growing-the-darn-tomatoes, a garden that’s mine). So all in all, good, but exhausting. Hopefully fall is good, restorative, and happy.