Jelly,Heat and Lace

Out of desperation to break up the monotony (and avert crawling up the walls ) caused by this relentless heat we are having, I've decided to make some jelly with the elderberries growing here in abundance.I made some years ago and it was delicious.

I picked a big bucked of berries:

washed them:

de-stemmed them:



cooked them,drained the juice ,and voila:

about 1 2/3 gallons of elderberry juice.

Adding the rest of the ingredients ( added 12 oz of grape juice too) i sealed the jars

and ended up with 15 -8 oz glasses of delicious jelly,

(first batch of 12):

or so i thought....

Unfortunately it didn't set. Apparently elderberries are notorious for not setting.

So, i will have to pour all of it back in the pot, add some more pectin and hope for the best.

We did use some of it on our ice cream last night like syrup. Oh, it is truly yummy!

I do have about 20 oz of juice left over that i will make into syrup. great over pancakes or -ice cream.

Still no movement on the Studio relocation.It's been 100+ every day. I'm literally house bound. I'm still working on the order of black socks. Finished the fourth pair yesterday. It's really slow going with this batch, luckily the customer is in no hurry.

I started on the lace shawl but found out that i don't like this kind of knitting at all.Too loose.