Okay, I am soaking up the last dregs of summer. It’s all about sunshine and poolside vibes.
I found the LAST lounge for the shade and hit the pool as soon as we could. And it was still easily 92 before the hottest part of the day. I cooled of in the water and then sat with my book to supervise the waterslide.
I am reading The Wedding People and it is book 7 of 10 for summer reading challenge for the library where I work. I already completed the book challenge for my hometown library. Only two more and I get some cool prizes!
I was recently visiting my parents recently and there were some “free to a good home” pile of books. Jellybean was so sad to see books about to get rained on so we rescued them.
I had never heard of this author, but they appear to a novel/beach read type of author. Lots of romance and mystery type of themes. It’s a pretty extensive collection of one author with only one duplicate. I think the duplicate will go into the Little Lending Library in my neighborhood.
I just can’t decide if I will keep these or keep sprinkling them around. I think I will test read one to find out if I like this author and their style. I should give it a fair shake, don’t you? I think I will peruse the synopses to see what catches my fancy as the best one.
PB is still chugging through swim lessons to finish out summer. It’s been a little rough with some absences and illness, but I hope we are still trending towards passing.
I am still trying to complete my summer reading challenge in not just one but two libraries. I am registered for both my local library but also with the library I am connected at work with. This is book number 6 of 6 for my local library. I picked this one up in a Targe splurge awhile back because the cover was pretty and the description was interesting.
I’m about halfway through since I only get a few minutes here and there, but this book gets strange halfway through. I am still going to finish but I didn’t predict some of the events in the story.
I have been procrastinating dealing with all my clean woolies from winter. And I woman-ed up and dealt with them this past weekend.
Everything was sorted, inspected, folded neatly and put into vacuum bags for the rest of the summer. I ended up with two bags of sweaters and two bags of accessories to be stored. And in full disclosure, some of my store bought items went in here too. I wanted to clear up some space in my closet for summer even though they didn’t see protecting per se.
Now they are living nicely in my craft room closet until I need them again. Next year, my goal is to get this done before summer is half over!
I have Jellybean working to earn money this summer for his dream technology. Turns out that is a very helpful parenting technique. I can sit on the patio and read with a coffee and he push mows the yarn before the Midwest heat gets us both.
This current book is “The World’s Greatest Detective and her Just Okayest Assistant” by Liz Tully. I picked this up on a whim on a delay in the airport. The cover was beautiful and I was bored. Turns out this book is GREAT. I haven’t had a ton a ton of time to read but I am really invested in this book. Would 10/10 recommend.
Happy 4th of July to all who choose to celebrate! The heat is starting to crank up the garden progress. We are already ahead of last year….or so I hope.
PB’s strawberries (that I was very skeptical of) are actually producing fruit. And she stated they were DELICIOUS. If these plants survive the summer I may actually try to over-winter them with some straw.
The main garden has produced a single (and beautiful) large jalapeno. I plan to dice this up for taco night this coming week. Not all my family members like jalapeno but maybe they will try a tiny bite that doesn’t have seeds.
Now I am off to shoot some fireworks with Jellybean and my Dad because we are ALL children when it comes to the 4th. Also, hopping for a really good and properly cooked s’mores
In non fibery news, my summer apple tree did very well this year. I harvested close to four plastic grocery bags of decent apples. I probably composted 50 times as much due to bird and animal loss. Or just failing to pick and they got rotten. And that is okay, I am not a commercial apple producer.
I cleaned up the apples and cut out all the bad or buggy bits and dropped into a pressure cooker. My preferred method is jelly from juice so I like to harvest that from the fruit. I cook as much of the apple including core an seed to develop as much natural pectin as possible
The juice is coming out very deep rose colored this year with the peel influencing the color. I use cheese close to harvest the juice. The kids didn’t really appreciate the apple sauce pulp flavor so I chose not to try to salvage any of that. I gave some to my friends with chickens and composted the rest.
It is crazy back to school time again so I don’t have capacity to make jelly right now so I sterilized several jars and I’m freezing the juice until I have time to work it. I am hoping that I can also get my hands on more wine grapes to re-stash my grape jelly stash as well this year.
And then I would just do a large cook day for jelly processing. Hopefully with extra hands to help!
Summer time also means major pool time for my kiddos. I took the liberty to put my pasty skin in the sun with some 70 SPF and knit on a chaise lounge.
This Dream State Musselburgh is my project I grab for auto pilot knitting when I don’t want to think or not sure what I want to work on. I think I added two stripes in this pool visit? My kids did occasionally press me into service to go down the family slide or watch them perform cool tricks.
I unfortunately protected my legs so hard that I ended up burning my shoulders and chest. Lessons were learned! Happy Summer!!
It’s summer here and in full swing with activities. That means late nights, cold beverages and easy dinners. Last night the kids requested grilled cheese and tomato soup.
That meant I could multitask! I popped on a podcast and knit while I made sure to not to burn the sandwiches. This is my Dream State Mussleburgh hat and I’m plodding along. This hat doesn’t have a “place” as it doesn’t live in my work bag or purse. It kinda bobs along to miscellaneous activities.
Late August around here means APPLE SEASON! Our crop was small but might this year but I think I have enough to do two batches of apply jelly.
It literally dangerously hot here in Kansas with 100-110 degree temperatures without the heat index. But apples ripen when they want. I took my time to wash and cut out the bad parts and pressure cook out the goodness.
After the juice is complete I made the basic cooked apply jelly recipe from the SureJell boxed instructions. This batch set but a very soft set. Not enough that I want to recook but I think I will make some tweaks for the second batch. It’s too hot for that!
OOOH! And I did something very environmentally friendly with the canning and sterilizing water. Stay tuned later this week!
My Tangled Yarn Knitting Adventures 