Usually I have a slack period work-wise in August, but this year I had to work most of August and am now enjoying a few weeks without the usual deadlines looming. There are so many things I should be doing – clearing out the porch which has somehow become a dump for holey wellies and a store for animal feed, decorating the bedroom where I discovered one rather mouldy looking patch of wall a few weeks ago (I have bought paint...), or giving the window frames a coat of wood stain before winter sets in again. But no. There are other things I need to get out of my system first.
I always find it difficult to ignore so much free fruit in the hedgerows and this year I am enjoying making jellies rather than jams. The good thing about making jellies is that it seems more relaxed. You just boil up some fruit with a bit of water until it is all soft, and then leave it to drip from a jelly bag (a scalded tea towel in a sieve) into a bowl overnight. Then the next day, whenever it suits you, you discard the pulp, boil up the drained liquid with some preserving sugar for about 15 minutes until it starts to set and bottle it up in sterilised jars. The Cottage Smallholder has lots of good recipes.
On Friday I picked some damsons and collected some windfalls in a friend's garden, so on Sunday I made two jars of damson jelly. Then yesterday I picked blackberries before the rain storm ruined them and today made four jars of apple and blackberry jelly.
I love the clear jewel-like colours. I am now tempted to make apple and rosehip jelly, just to see what colour it comes out – I'm guessing a delicate honey-pink. And that will, I think, be my preserving gene satisfied for another year!
Meanwhile, I had bought some pieces of drilled sea glass from a seller on the Folksy website and was desperate to make them into a piece of jewellery. I was originally planning to make them into a necklace, but I felt that just stringing the glass together on its own wasn't very successful. I gathered together all my bits and pieces of wire and beads and catches, and eventually made three bracelets by threading and knotting the sea glass, some green beads and spacers, some wooden beads and some irregular silver spacers together on a waxed linen thread.
The three bracelets look particularly good all together and I shall wear them all for a while before deciding whether to sell two of them or not.
What I really want to do now is buy a little drill and work out how to drill my own sea glass, carnelian and the few bits of amber that I have picked up on the beaches of Suffolk and Norfolk over the last four decades...
Now to the Wisdens. I spent my bank holiday weekend photographing Wisdens and typesetting an auction catalogue, and I shall spend next Saturday in Leicester at an auction of Wisden Cricketer's Almanacks – not my thing really, but my husband's. So if you know anyone who has an interest in cricket, or a collection of Wisdens of their own, they might want to take a look at the full catalogue on the Knights website. Just to give you a taste, here is what looks like being the rarest item of the sale, an 1864 1st edition rebound in brown boards... estimate £5000/£7000.
And to put things in perspective, lot 1 is a 1973 hardback, estimate £18/£25.
Once the auction is over I shall look forward to Sunday and hope the weather stays fine for the Ingworth Trosh – a few Norfolk folk, a stubble field, a few old tractors and engines, a threshing machine on the go, Olive's tea and cakes – a sort of harvest festival in a class of its own.
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