Cherry Time

In addition to my quilting addiction, I am also slightly obsessed with canning. Commercially canned food is easy to buy and it's so much cheaper than I can make it using all fresh, locally grown produce, but for some unexplainable reason, I enjoy the home canning process. 

Jam is my favourite thing to make and this week I made some delicious cherry jam. There are a range of fancy tools available for pitting cherries, but I still use my mother-in-law's old cherry pitter. After pitting a few cherries your thumb starts to sting and after you pit enough for a batch of jam, your thumb is really sore from moving that plunger up and down. But it's only once a year, so I power through. But next year I'm going to try this youtube method which looks too good to be true!


This batch resulted in a jam maker's disappointment called "fruit float". The consistency is okay (even though I never add the recommended amount of sugar), but perhaps I didn't cut the cherries small enough? Oh well, it tastes great and that's the main thing.

On the same day as I was pitting and canning cherries, I was hand quilting a cherry block for my Life is Beautiful quilt. 

What are the chances of that?!?

And now... for your smile of the day, hop over to quilt historian Barbara Brackman's blog post about the "alarming trends" she has noticed - click here.