random goodness

I’ve been doing a little experimenting with canning and pickling lately thanks to this great book that I found, The New Preserves: Pickles, Jams, and Jellies.

Here’s a quick and easy recipe that I tried out the other day with some fresh cucumbers from our garden:

Alicia’s 24-Hour Chips

1 salad cucumber or three small pickling cucumbers
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tsp. Sugar (optional)

Wash and peel the cucumbers and cut crosswise.
Layer the slices in a suitable container with lid, then fill about halfway up with vinegar. If desired, sprinkle with sugar. Eat in one to three days. Store in refrigerator.

I absolutely love fresh cut tomatoes on pizza…it’s fun having garden and farmer’s market food to depend on in the summer to pull together quick and easy meals like this. The crust recipe is from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

In quilting progress, I was able to arrange the blocks yesterday for the Plain Spoken quilt. Unfortunately, due to a user error on my part, the quilt no longer looks like this. I had stacked the blocks in rows for easy sewing and then inadvertently turned the rows into columns. Luckily, I caught the error of my ways halfway through sewing the top, so I was able to arrange it and cover the mistake without having to use a seam ripper (yay!).

Here’s a finished object that I’ve been working on since Father’s day. It’s Elisa’s Nest Tote from thepurlbee.com. I procrastinated on this way too long because I didn’t have time to sit down and figure out how to do an applied I-cord and I finished up the Kitchener stitch for the handles this afternoon. While I was looking at whipup this afternoon, I noticed a post with a tutorial for a modification for this bag. I have an unfinished yellow version waiting in the wings that I might use to try out the new handle option. The bag was made with size 10.5 needles and turquoise Sugar N Cream yarn. Now I'll have to see if my shoddy craftsmanship holds up with a trip to the farmer's market this weekend! It's looking doubtful!