Isn’t everything funnier when you kick it off with a cat macro phrase? I think so, but I have a sense of humor that allows me to get along really well with toddlers and prison inmates.
Have I mentioned my love for autumn yet? I love crisp smoky air, apples, anticipatory winter knitting, falling leaves, and cloudy skies. I do miss the interesting insects going away for the season, along with some of the more interesting bats and birds, but burying yourself under warm blankets and PJs with a book, and not sweating through car journeys makes it worth it.
Oh, and PUMPKINS.
Pumpkins are permanently linked to my two favorite holidays: Halloween, and Stuff-Your-Face-With-Turkey-and-take-Naps-giving. And I adore all things pumpkin (except pie, oddly) My bedspread is dirty-pumpkin-orange, I spend all of spring thinking about the Coffee Emporiums Autumnfest blend coffee (the best pumpkin spice coffee ever), I drink pumpkin ale like it’s going out of style… well you get the idea. It’s just that there isn’t much you can do with those lovely orange gourds once you’ve made your pies and jack o’ lanterns…
Actually, you can pickle them…
Also, I’ve been reading We have always lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The description of Constance’s beautiful canning, glistening on the cellar shelf alongside generations of Blackwood women’s efforts at fall preservation, got me all exited to try my hand at it.
Canning has always held a sort of odd mystique for me. It’s hardly a glamorous activity but seeing those shelves in my Grandmothers cellar, filled with shiny jars -all bland greens and bright jelly colors with opaque cakes of wax floating on top – fascinated me when I was little. You couldn’t eat those ancient canned items, but no one ever threw them away. The Blackwoods of Castle fame threw nothing away either, and the first hints of the family’s poisonous nature is in Merricat’s observation that eating the older fruits of the Blackwood cellar would surely kill you…
So, brain afire with images of shiny glass Ball jars filled with my very own mysterious, hopefully botulism free, canning efforts I set out to pickle me some pumpkins! But first I had to decipher the recipe, let’s just say my relatives have less than perfect handwriting.
The cryptic recipe should have been my first clue that the whole affair was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Have you got any idea how difficult it is to find sweet pie pumpkins even around thanksgiving? Damn near impossible! Luckily Jungle Jims came to my rescue and I was able to score about five pounds of tiny, sweet pie pumpkins on the discount rack, along with two bottles of extra super strength German vinegar (anything over 6% was what I needed, and it proved very hard to find). Thanks to the strange binge I had six months ago when I bought a lot of cheap and cheerful bulk spices for masala chai I was all set.
Mini pumpkins…and a mini microwave too
This is the first piece of advice I will offer you, fair reader. If you are ever given the choice between peeling 3 pounds of teeny pumpkins and say, gnawing off your own arm…
Gnaw off your arm.
The knuckles on my left hand will testify to that. But once I suffered through two hours of de-seeding, peeling and chopping those pumpkin chunks went straight into a pickly marinade, and then the next day into the canning liquid and into the canning bath…
Here’s what we ended up with:
(does my filthy stove make you feel better?)
Four wee cans of lovely pumpkin pickles! I’ll offer a recipe when I taste them in a couple weeks, as my cooking technique is really more “mad scientist” than Martha Stuart. On the upside my apartment smells pretty awesome now, like cloves and cinnamon (and homemade tomato sauce, but thats another story entirely)
On a yarn related note, my first order (I know, I feel guilty about it too) of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Raven Clan yarns has arrived…. I was stoked about this because it’s damn hard to find dark colored yarns for my knitting plots. I’m not exactly into perky colors or the muted earth tones and Liberty colors, so rich and complex dark shades are right up my alley.
On the first round I got the Geisha, the mohair and mulberry silk blend, in the “Valkrie” color and I’m not disappointed. Its really lovely and soft without a trace of the itchiness that I usually associate with mohair. The dye is well saturated and the colors are consistent, there wasn’t anything mysterious or weird stuck to the yarn in clumps, or any knots. Basically it’s mohair good enough for Ed Wood. Eventually it’ll become a cowl and arm-warmers for warm winter wear. The yarns real attraction are the colors, lovely blackcurrant, dark raspberry and velvety black. Yummy stuff!
I got the Haida silk thread as well but I’m too terrified to unwind it until I get a swift. The blues and blacks are beautiful together though, the best “raven” look out of all the yarns I’ve seen so far, with the combination of silk about as wide as a feather shaft in shifting blue and black. Dreamy stuff – I think I’ve completely lost my mind though as I am already thinking knitting the Print o’ the Wave shawl with it…
The Rook-y medium weight sock yarn is lovely fluffy and soft, and all the *colors* are very nice, it’s just there are very weird white unsaturated blotches that I find rather irksome. To keep myself from getting too angry about them I remind myself of Clarice Starlings bleach splattered piebald crow…
So naturally I’m looking forward to my next batch of sock yarn! Now if only I can keep my act together and not freak out and order the Kim Hargreaves Dark House collection book… (not likely, the deadly combination of deep dark colored yarns and perfect patterns is sure to spell financial doom for me)
