That's what I've been up to lately. I have designed seven knitted shawl patterns, published five of them (see photos of all,of the shawls at the bottom of this blog) and put up five peach pies in the freezer.
Okay, I have been doing plenty more than just this but these are highlights.
Living here in small farm and orchard country in Upstate New York is an amazing blessing during harvest season in particular. Everywhere you turn there is a farm stand, farm market or green thumbed neighbor brimming over with fresh berries, fruits, and vegetables beginning in June and continuing far into the fall.
Everything is fresh and fantastically delicious, it just makes you feel healthy and prosperous looking around at all the bounty. My biggest problem is that I'll get home with bunches of goodies I procured at a very economical price and then often I have so much going on that I have a hard time getting around to making preserves, pies, and so forth.
Such was the case this week when we brought home eight quarts of the most wonderful plump peaches you could ever hope to come by. I had intended to make peach preserves and a each pie but I couldn't get around to doing either.
Then yesterday, worried the peaches would go bad, I quickly peeled and sliced them up and did this very cool thing ... I packaged them in five pound lots in ziplock freezer bags, tossed them with the sugar, cornstarch and spices necessary for peach pies and then I frozen them in pie dishes.
This morning I took the frozen bags out of the pie dishes, and they are shaped like pies now they just don't have crusts yet. But I put them in a large 2.5 gallon freezer bag, all stacked up.
Now, when we want a peach pie I'll just put a crust in a pie dish, put one these frozen pie-shaped peach pie things on the crust, add my top crust and bake.
None of the peaches were wasted, and now we have five mostly ready peach pies waiting to be enjoyed anytime we wish.
I'm going to do this with apples also. :)
As for the shawls, I started designing and knitting them back in early spring. Writing the patterns up and getting them published and marketed is very time consuming, but I have managed to get five published recently in my
Ravelry store and at
Etsy. The others will be ready in October.
The five I have already published are available individually, but then I also published a
collection of all five for those who want it all at an economical price.
The collection is titled "The Livin' is Easy", a line from my most favorite song of all time, "Summertime" from the musical
Porgy and Bess. The others in the collection are also named from lines in the song. One, "Abbie" is named for the actress who first sang the song on stage.
Three are top down triangular shawls, and one (Take to the Sky) is a rectangle; they range in difficulty from easy to moderately difficult.
Three have written directions as well as charts (
Rise up Singing,
Abbie, and Take to the Sky), while the other two (
One of These Mornings and
Summertime) are charted.
Take to the Sky is perfect for anyone new to lace knitting or wanting an easy project to use for learning how to follow a chart. I wrote the pattern up to be very clear and easy to follow and I include instructions as to how to follow the charts.
If you learn about this pattern here on my blog and want to give it a try, you can get it for half price at Ravelry by using the coupon code: PEACHPIE at checkout. (The pattern is priced at $4.00, so you will get it for $2.00).
Today is a chilly, windy day and autumn is clearly on the way, but we still have flowers blooming outdoors and we are enjoying of the last vestiges of summer we can find because this has been our most perfect summer so far.
Hope you are having a beautiful day.
~firefly
Abbie
One of These Mornings
Take to the Sky
Remember, you can get Take to,the Sky for half price at Ravelry by using the coupon code: PEACHPIE at checkout. (The pattern is priced at $4.00, so you will get it for $2.00).
Summertime
The Livin' is Easy (5 Patterns) eBook
