So today I have a little bit of food to share, instead.

I brought home rather a LOT of pickling cucumbers from the produce stores near my work yesterday, and today set about making some refrigerator pickles. No water processing required, no fear of bad canning, and they stay so very crispy, which I love!

I made one huge vat of cucumber garlic dills – it’s 1.8L/2qt! The slightly smaller jar in the back is beans, done up with basically the same spices and brine. They were yellow, green, and purple to start with, but unfortunately now they’re all kind of greeny grey. Oh well, they’ll still taste awesome.

Super Easy Garlic Dills

Veggies:
Whatever you like. I did sliced kirby cucumbers and trimmed green beans, I’m sure this would be great with carrots, cauliflower, radishes, whatever! I’m not sure how many cucumbers I used – probably about 10 small ones for the 1.8L jar.

Brine:
4 cups / 1L water
4 cups / 1L white vinegar
6tbsp pickling salt

Seasonings:
garlic, peeled
dill seed
red pepper flakes
black peppercorns
celery seed
fresh dill

Mix together water, vinegar and salt in a largeish pot and heat on the stove to a simmer. While it’s heating, prep your veggies and add seasonings to your jars.

For the 1.8L jar of cucumbers, I used: 4 cloves garlic, 4 tsp dill seed, a dash each of celery seed and red pepper flakes, 3 stalks fresh dill and a few whole black peppercorns.

Pack the veggies tightly into the jars leaving some room at the top (1/2″-1″, not as important as when processing because we’re just sticking these in the fridge). Slowly add brine to cover. Let the jars cool on the counter, then stick them in the fridge. That’s it! They’ll begin to taste pickled after just a few hours, but it’s best to wait at least a few days.

Wow, that’s a giant jar of pickles!

I also managed to find Ontario strawberries at the big chain supermarket, which I was pretty surprised by – I picked up three containers and made jam with half (I might get more tomorrow or soon and make more or ice cream!). I prefer freezer jam because it uses much less sugar, and has that just-picked-fruit taste that you just don’t get with cooked jam.

I just followed the recipe on the gelling agent packet and it came out perfectly. I’ll definitely have to make at least 1 more batch of freezer jam soon, maybe wild blueberry!

What are you doing with this summer’s awesome produce?

Unfortunately it’s too big for me. I made a bit of a math error and although it’s proportional and everything, it’s just about a size too big. I’ve blocked it and woven in the ends already (denying to myself the fact that it was too big) and I don’t want to rip again. So it’ll go off to a friend and I’ll work up another one. At least this time it’ll be even faster since it’ll be smaller?

In latest spinning news, I pulled out some tussah silk that I’d started spinning well over a year ago.

It’s Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks, definitely purchased at Rhinebeck – maybe the first time I went? I had spun up the first half of the fibre and it was just sitting on the bobbin all this time. I spun up the second half fairly quickly (not very evenly, really) and plied it together to get 430 yards of laceweight (2oz). Should be enough for a little shawlette! I love the colour.

I think my last bit of Tour spinning will be this silk/camel. It spins like a dream, but the pink comes off on my fingertips a bit. Super soft though! I’m planning to spin up the whole 4oz and chain ply by the end of the week.

After the Tour is over, I’m definitely going to keep spinning – it’s really given me that kick to get back to the wheel. It’s meditative, doesn’t require math (like my knitting always does) and it’s a good break from working on my knitting like I always am!

Have you achieved your Tour de Fleece goals? What are you planning to do with your spinning after it’s all over?

Then there are the other reasons I go – the people. Hanging out with my yarny internet friends that I might talk to all the time but see in person only a couple times a year. The parties are great (the Ravelry Ice Cream Social was super fun!) but even more fun to me are the quieter gatherings that happen organically all over the place during TNNA – at North Market, at the bar, on the street. So many awesome people, old friends and new ones.

And then there’s the Jeni’s! I’m not sure if it’s the best ice cream in the world, but that’s just because I haven’t tasted all the ice cream in the world! It’s damn good, and I made a point of trying as many flavours as I possibly could in my 5 days in Columbus – I did pretty well at that, and had half scoops of TWELVE flavours! And yep, they were all delicious.

I just got home this evening, and already I can’t wait for next year.

P.S. If you’re curious about all the great new stuff coming out this year, check out Hello TNNA!. The roving Ravelry reporters did an awesome job walking the floor, talking to people and blogging it all for you!

- Estonian lace (nupps!)
- large scale lace (I love this too)
- shawlettes (is anyone surprised?)
- floral/organic/leafy shapes

The Random Number Generator has spoken and the winner is comment number 404, from Eliza: “I actually had to read the comments to determine what different types of lace there are! I like to knit lace shawls, but I’m also working on a large format lace cardigan.”

To cap off this post, a little bit of fingering weight lace I was working on this week (man this colour is hard to photograph – it’s the Sliver Moon Farm stuff from a couple posts ago):

Thanks for playing everyone!

I really can’t handle the caffeine from coffee or tea (boooooo) so I’ve just not been drinking them. Then I realized that do have some nice decaf beans! Hurrah! Made some strong espresso in the mokapot and having it in my favourite mug from Anthropologie.

Starting a new swatch, too – Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Douglas Fir.

Took a few tries (had to rip back a bit due to shoulder miscalculation) but I finished knitting up the yoke the other night and joined the shoulders with a three-needle bindoff. Something about the shape of the neckline in this particular sweater really tickles my fancy!

Then came some nice twisted ribbing. Works really well with this tweedy yarn. Too bad the dressform kind of lacks shoulders, it makes it look like they’re falling off! Needs a good blocking to help everything relax.

The seamless set-in sleeve technique that I’m using is from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop.