Food Preserving Factory

That's how it's been around here lately.

This was the last couple of days results !

At the top is the beautiful apple sauce I made using our amazing Kitchenaid attachment. These apples came from our friends, Chuck and Valerie's orchard. In the middle on the right, it's in the jars. With the leftover skins, cores etc I made a big jar of pectin to use in jam making. That's the bottom right picture. I had to try the pectin out so I made a couple of jars of blackberry jelly with left over blackberries from the Christmas Blackberry Brandy we made this week. 

(A Periwinkle tradition !) and the jelly set up great so I'd definitely be calling that a success. Also in that pic is some yummy fruit leather with MORE of the berry juice and the awesome apple sauce.

Lastly are the hop yeast cakes. These still need a bit of work I must admit ! I first found some recipes for hop yeasts in an old book at the museum. I think it must have been this one https://archive.org/details/younghousekeeper00corn

It's still in the experimental stage. These cakes are made with the hop yeast and cornmeal. They are dried, ( I dried them in my dehydrator, which is not really how it happened in 1859, but still), and then can be stored in an airtight jar.I

 also watched a youtube vid from a prepper lady, 

https://m.youtube.com/user/BexarPrepper. 

She also makes the cakes to keep in the larder.

Feeling very productive !

Wash Day

After all the rain we have had the last couple of days I thought our well would be somewhat replenished so .....

Time to wash up some fleece,

This is just half of the lovely Romney fleece I got earlier in the year from our friends, Austen and Lisa.

And the other half soaking in the wash tub. It is a big fleece !

And one last shot of some of the little appliqué patches I've been making lately, just because I thought they looked cute !

Canada Day Cruise

We went for a lovely trip out today in the boat. Saltery Bay round to Scotch Fir Point.

Visited a little island along the way.

A photo Collage For The Day

Lambs, basil, the garden and homemade raspberry ice cream !

Two Interesting Things

.... Happened on my walk today.

First off I found the first patch of Cortinarius semisanguineus this year. These are one of the shrooms that dyers always look for. I think they must bloom later in the year,  (if that is what mushrooms do ?), anyhow I was happy to see them.

As we walked back down the trail I spotted one of my handmade hats hanging on a branch ! 

To be honest I had not noticed it was lost, but was very pleased to see it !

Unfortunately I think it must have had a tangle with a forest denizen. 

It will never be quite the same again !!

If hats could talk .....

Adventures With Mushroom Dyeing

A couple of weekends ago the weavers and spinners contingent of the Powell River Fine Arts were lucky enough to have Ann Harmer come up from Pender Harbour and lead us in a 2 day mushroom dyeing workshop.
You can check out Ann's fantastic blog of her own mushroom adventures here.

The first day the group headed out into the forest around Powell River eager to find mushrooms that would give us colour.

After tramping about in the woods lots of mushrooms were found. 

Headed back to the Fine Arts facility Ann's wealth of knowledge correctly identified the shrooms that would hopefully give up some of their colourful pigments.

The next day we prepared the mushrooms for the dye baths.

We had 4 main types of mushrooms that we were going to be working with.

These are Hypomyces Lactifluorum, (Lobster mushrooms)

They need to be peeled and this is the result of the brightly coloured parings.

This next picture is Hydnellum Aurantiacum, a toothed fungus,cut up into small pieces and in the pot !

Next up is Phaeolus schwinitzii, or Dyer's Polypore often found on old fir stumps.

I don't have a pic of the "schnitzel" as I call it but here,  Lois, Lis and Amy, (our guest from Campbell River) are working hard on the preparations.

Last up is the beautiful, (well I think so anyway !) Tapinella atrotomentosa or Velvet pax.

Look at this lovely specimen. 

We also had some other varieties that we experimented with 

but these four were the ones that we worked with and produced samples for the whole group.

We had already premordanted our wool with

 a)alum/cream of tartar

 b) iron

c) copper

Here we are, hard at work, 

(in other words having loads of fun and getting messy).

And here are the end results.

We got some great colours !

Here are my sample sheets that we all made up.

What a great experience and we learned SO much, thank you Ann for a wonderful workshop, Marty for organizing it. Thank you also to Doreen for being the official photographer and sharing these photos with us.

There is the 2013 Sunshine Coast Mushroom Festival coming up next weekend,

 if you wanted to learn more about mushrooms I encourage you to check the link.

Skeins and skeins

...... Of geese,    Off they go for their winter break.

And here are our mushroom dyed skeins from Saturday's workshop.

More to come on that.