I went to the farmer’s market this morning, and in a frenzy of overenthusiasm, bought 20 lbs of apricots:
In case you’re wondering about the different appearance, the left-hand apricots are Blenheim variety, the right-hand ones Pattersons. I was going to buy all Pattersons because they have such a wonderful flowery flavor, but the farmer/vendor made such an impassioned plea regarding the superiority of Blenheims for jam that I decided to try both. I plan to make one batch of each using a honey apricot jam recipe I’m very fond of – if I have enough honey. If not, I may wind up going to a different farmer’s market again tomorrow to get the right honey. I’m extremely fussy about the quality of my honey, and there’s a vendor there who sells wonderful orange blossom honey. (I hope the quality of honey is good this year – a rainy spring can make for very poor quality honey, and we had oodles of rain this spring.)
At any rate, not content with getting myself into 20 lbs of apricot jam-making, I cruised on over to another vendor, who had such huge, beautiful Bing cherries that I just had to have another 5 lbs. These will become candied sweet cherries and go into another batch of fruitcake:
Between those two and the fact that Mike and I are having a 4th of July BBQ next weekend and need to clean the house up, I think I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend. 🙂
I had intended to thread up the loom and wind a bunch of yarn for dye samples, but it appears that I’ll be waiting for the new yarn to come in before doing the samples for my study group. Also, Mike and I have ordered more powerful fans for my compudobby box, and I don’t want to use the compudobby extensively until we’ve had a chance to switch out the fans. They should arrive Monday or Tuesday of next week, so I can start threading then.
So, the only fiber-related thing currently on the agenda is winding enough skeins for a 30-color gradient weft, and dyeing samples for that color gradient. I think I’ll tackle that tomorrow, along with some cleaning.
Off to make apricot jam!
