THREE MORE DEAR JANE BLOCKS

 I made three more Dear Jane blocks today.  So, I did get my four made for the week.  Just barely.

DEAR JANE A-11

 I had apparently passed this block by because it was difficult.  I made it today and it was very difficult.  Almost all of the seams were partial seams, which isn't easy with 1/2" pieces.

But, I got it made, even if it isn't the prettiest thing I've ever made.  This is block A-11, Penny's Protest.

FINISHING THE CUCUMBER CHIPS

 This morning I got the empty pint jars into the water canner to heat them up.  

I drained the brine the chips soaked in overnight, retaining it and heating it back up to a boil.

When everything was ready I packed the chips into the jars and poured the brine over them and put them into the water canner.  When they were all packed and ready to go, I set the canner to processing.  

Here is the finished product: beautiful and delicious, too.  And the whole process smelled sooo good.

CUCUMBER CHIPS!

 I love Cucumber Chips and we are having a lot of cucumbers from our garden this year.  So, I made some.

I made a double batch. The Ball recipe makes 4 pints, and I wanted more.

There are a lot of steps to making Cucumber Chips.

First there's picking the cukes and scrubbing them clean.  And then they are sliced using this fancy, wavy cutter.

They are then covered in salt and left for at least three hours.  This pulls a lot of liquid from them.  

The liquid is poured off and then they are rinsed. Next step is to soak them in a mixture of vinegar, water and turmeric.  This changes their color into a beautiful yellow green.

That liquid is poured off and then they are left to soak overnight in a spiced, sugary, hot brine.

THREE BEAN SALAD MIX

 I made and canned some Three Bean Salad mix today.

Darrell picked the green beans from our garden.  We bought some yellow wax beans at the West Seattle Farmers Market yesterday.  I got the rest of the ingredients this morning when we did our weekly grocery shopping.

First I chopped all of the vegetables: green beans, yellow wax beans, onion, red pepper and celery.

I boiled all of them together for a few minutes to partially cook them. 

I made the brine and got the water canner going and then when the jars were warm I began packing everything into them, included some canned beans, because I couldn't find the Lima beans the recipe calls for.

Into the water bath they went.

Here's the finished product: beautiful!

There was a bit leftover, not enough to fill another pint, so I had it for lunch - delicious!  

 

MORE JUNK JOURNALS

 I made two more Junk Journals.  I used another cracker box and a cookie box for the covers, covered them in fabric and reinforced the spines.  I used a simple pamphlet stitch for sewing in the signatures. 

The inside papers are an assortment of all different things.  I even went into my flat files and pulled out some very old sketches and paintings and cut them up to make pages.

I think this e bond fabric was meant to be a book cover.

I made the fabric on this cover with the Deconstructing Screen Printing method (it's been in my stash for years). The beads are some handmade beads from Sue's collection.

FINISHED JUNK JOURNAL

 I organized the Junk Journal signatures from yesterday and punched the binding holes in the spine of the cover I made.  (I love how this fabric looks on the cover - it always amazes me how much some fabrics look better than I thought when you cut them up).  Then using an awl, punched the holes into the four signatures.

I sewed the signatures into the cover with a simple pamphlet stitch and added some beads (some of which I inherited from my sister Sue) on the outside.