Seattle sunset, 8 pm

Canning 101

I used the Pioneer Woman's strawberry jam instructions to make my very first batch of canned jam from local raspberries off a friend's farm. While the process was quite easy to follow, I would NOT recommend subbing fruits. Raspberries are so much mushier that I ended up with liquidy, albeit delicious, raspberry syrup. Apparently I can remake it using these instructions, but I quite like the idea of saving a few cans of syrup for my pancakes or yogurt. Luckily I also have 5 more pounds of raspberries to play with. My kitchen now looks like a scene from Dexter, but this mess is much tastier.

It's sunny. I made pizza.

On the Water: 3 Days of Summer

Friday

 Saturday

 Sunday

It's been a wintry summer

 I've been baking, (this recipe)

 Knitting,

 Baking some more, (this recipe)

And finally breaking down and going on a hike, in the middle of a summer thunderstorm.

Sneaky Peek

Some works for my BFA exhibition. Promise you'll act surprised when you see them hanging all lit and professional?

Sunny Sunday Scores

 First up are my new Toast Catalogs. I can't resist the photography, beautiful paper and styling contained in these hefty catalogs from the UK. And they send them for free! So hefty I needed a handy grapefruit to hold the pages open to take a snap between the pages. My printer/scanner is ridiculous and refuses to do anything at all until I feed it $20 of black ink, even things that don't require any ink. Like scanning. First two are the Spring women's catalog, second two are the House & Home edition.

 Next score of the day is books from the Friends of the Library book sale. All books 50 cents today, even hardbacks! I would have liked to stay, well, all day, but E needed to go mountain biking and dragged me away. But not before snagging 3 gorgeous tomes- The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, and Forest Defenders: The Controversial American Landscape by Christopher Lamarca. The first two are outdoor adventures/memoirs about the Grand Canyon and the Appalachian Trail, respectively. The last is a photographic account of the environmental activists in Oregon who protect old growth forests from clear cut logging. This issue is dear to my heart, as I spent 4 months in Tasmania- a similarly lush and rich temperate climate being devastated by logging for pulp mills- helping the organization Still Wild, Still Threatened in their efforts to save something from the lumber company Gunn's. These photos are eerily similar to my experience in the Florentine Valley, sitting on a logging road watching 500 year old trees fall all around, knowing you can only save a handful, but knowing even that is vital. So happy I found this book to show others.

 And last but not least, my mini garden. I made some newsprint seed pots and planted flax, chives, cilantro, potato, lemon tree, fuschia and centradenia. Along with my two scraggly stems of basil, an eternally wilted pansy delivered to my front porch by a nearby bank and a mystery plant given me by my mom, I have quite the forest of greenery for a studio apartment.

Postcards ordered!