Life can suck at times........

I've been absent from my blog as life has gotten in the way and I don't have too much to share.  We did have family visiting and had a great time with them doing some fun activities like jet boat rides on the river, going to Wildlife Safari, the coast and just catching up. Sunday I made 2 batches of strawberry jam and one of strawberry/blueberry jam. This is the only photo I have to share at the moment.....you'll see why below.

I have been working here and there on my gingko quilted wallhanging - only snippets of time but as of yesterday I've finally got the entire thing free motion quilted. Now I need to trim it up and add a facing onto it as I don't want a traditional quilt binding....then the hanging sleeve.

Disaster struck (why life sucks at times) Friday morning when my desktop computer wouldn't boot up - the computer that has my life on it. Long story short the hard drive failed...….automatic external  back-up drive also recently failed....and the power supply was going. So, I guess backing up my files on the external hard drive wasn't enough, I should have had a back up to that. This affects everything - personal files, business files & artwork, artwork, photographs, everything...….well, almost everything, I've got my weaving software files and embroidery machine files on the laptop that I back up on thumb drives. When something pops into my head that I may have lost tears come to my eyes, like all my photos of Bailey. So, new desktop computer bought but no files on it yet. IT guy at Sam's office worked on it but can't retrieve them off my old hard drive or back-up drive so they're now at a local computer store but no guarantee. We did have a ghost of the computer made 2 years ago in the safety deposit box so that's with Sam at work now with hopes he can pull files off that so then I will have only lost the last 2 years worth of files. Not good but way better than losing 25+ years worth. (No, my computer wasn't 25 years old, just files transferred from computer to computer over the years)

I did have some other pictures to share but they have been downloaded to the new desktop and that's at the office at the moment so I don't have access to them.

Maybe I'll get more time soon to create more that I'd like to share here but alas, more family coming to visit soon (a good thing) so it will be a while...….

Blueberries and jam making

 A weaver back east shared this Blueberry Buckle recipe (from Cooks Illustrated) - it's incredibly yummy, I mean like deliciously yummy, to die for yummy. It's the best of all worlds - it's like a cobbler, like a crisp, like a coffee cake. I'm going to try it with other berries, maybe even peaches or apples.

The same day I made more jam. Two batches of strawberry/blueberry and two batches of figs. The fig trees at the other house (one we're trying to sell with a fire close by) have a bumper crop of figs this year.  I'm not sure how many I've eaten straight from the trees, they're like eating candy........for that matter I'm not sure how many handfuls of blueberries I've eaten this past week either.

The fire keeps on growing, more to the north and west at the moment. Good news is that some evacuation areas have gone from level 3 to level 2, and from level 2 to level 1. Our road is still on level 1, no change there.....hoping it won't be too far off. We'd really like that house to sell but no one is going to go look at it with the fire going full guns. But there is progress being made on the fire so that's a great thing and all the hard work from fire personnel has kept all houses safe to date.

Fig Jam

After weaving for a bit this morning I decided to make some fig jam......never made it before, very tasty although really sweet.......think it will be great over brie or goat's cheese on crackers.  We have two fig trees, usually I eat the figs right off the tree or dry them - this year enough ripened at the same time that I could eak one batch of jam out of them. I had to scrounge around for jars as I've made so much jam this year I've pretty much used up my jam jar stash. I'd still like to make some blackberry jam but need to find a place to pick blackberries.......

Rain!!!

 I woke up to rain overnight - it sounded so lovely and what a welcome relief, at least for a few days, during fire season. We don't usually get rain in the summer - it stops raining sometime in May/early June and doesn't restart again until late September or early October. I don't care for the humidity that came with it but it's also cool out so it's not bad at all.........and I'll take just a bit of humidity in exchange for a nice break from the dry brittle weather.

Cousin Jim gave me some apricots from his neighbor's tree so yesterday I made a batch of apricot jam. These apricots were incredible to just pop in my mouth, tree ripened.

It's strawberry season..........

 It's strawberry season here in Southern Oregon already. The strawberry stand at a big field of strawberries practically in the city was open on Friday so I picked up a half flat.........to start........

......and turned them into 10 jars of jam plus a bowl leftover for eating straight up. Hmm, fresh strawberry jam on my bagel this morning. I think I need to pick up some more berries for another batch.........and some strawberry bread, strawberry cake, strawberry smoothies.....there's nothing like fresh picked, totally ripe, strawberries..........

My heart goes out to all those affected by the fires in Fort McMurray, Alberta, CA. I just can't imagine the magnitude of it. We've had a fire that big in area but only on the edges of homes, nothing like what's happened and continues to happen to our neighbors to the north.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there of 2 and 4 legged kids........

Sunshine Marmalade.....aka Three-Fruit Marmalade

Since this is such an unusual and yummy recipe I thought I'd post it. It's called Three-Fruit Marmalade by Lorraine Wright and I got it out of the August/September 2011 Country Woman Magazine. I thought it needed a more descriptive name so I've renamed it 'Sunshine Marmalade' because it looks (and tastes) like sunshine in a jar. Hmm, I need to make some scones......

1 medium orange
2 cups chopped peeled fresh peaches
2 cups chopped peeeled fresh pears
1 pkg powdered fruit pectin
5 cups sugar

Finely grate peel from orange; peel and sectoin the fruit. Place peel and section in a Dutch oven. Add peaches and pears. Stir in pectin. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Stir in sugar; bring to a full rolling boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; skim off foam.

Ladle hot mixture into hot sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Remove air bubbles; wipe rims and adjust lids. Process for 5 minutes in a boiling-water canner. Yield: 4 pints

Ok, here's my change - I don't process jam in a boiling-water canner. The extension service would not approve but it works just fine. I put the hot jam mixture into the jars, put the lids on tight and turn the jars upside down on a towel for around 5 minutes, then I turn the jars upright. Then the popping begins as the lids seal - makes me smile as it does. Over 20+ years I've only had a couple jars that didn't seal, they just went straight in the fridge.

Not doing what I should be......

I'm getting good at not doing what I should be. Today I should have been hard at work at the dyepots. It was a perfect day for it, cloudy and cool. But no, I ran to town for some more Sure Jell so I could make jam this afternoon - 2 batches of strawberry and 2 batches of marmalade. I'm not a huge marmalade fan but this recipe looked intriguing...orange, peaches & pears....it's yummy!

Tomorrow must be a dye day....have so much dyeing ahead of me this summer.........

Instead of fiber today..........

Instead of playing with fiber today a friend and I played with peaches and make peach jam - 50 jars of peach jam from one lug I picked up on Wednesday. We made 4 batches of straight peach jam, then I happened to have bought a flat of blueberries so we replaced around 25% of the peaches with blueberries and made 4 more batches that way (the red looking jam). Some batches were regular jam, some lower sugar - both taste great! Hmm, might have to make some scones and clotted cream soon to give this jam a proper taste test.

On the fire front - not sure where the fires are that were sparked by the lightening in the big storm we had 2 nights ago but lots of helicopters going over our house - flight path is east - west. The copter with the bucket flew over yesterday evening, then the big copter at least 8 times. Today the big copter numerous times and just now the one with the bucket was flying so low it vibrated the house, started wondering as I was standing on the deck watching how close that bucket was to the chimney. Still not sure where they,re heading but I know it's not terribly close to us.