Vintage Home and Farm

Last summer, we were overwhelmed with the harvest (as usual!), and so rather than canning our sour cherries at that time, we just put the pitted and washed cherries into the freezer, with thoughts of making sour cherry jam sometime during the winter months.  Well, that time has come.  Today I pulled out one of the bags of frozen sour cherries and made jam. In addition to the two bags of sour cherries still in our big freezer (above), there is another big bag in our kitchen freezer.  Plus the bag that I just made into jam!  So many cherries.... Usually I make jam using Pomona's Pectin since it requires a lot less sugar, but today I discovered I didn't have enough of it in the cupboard.  But I did have some Ball pectin that says it's "Low or No-Sugar Needed Pectin".  I hadn't tried this before and don't even remember buying it, but I must have because there it was in the cupboard.  It hadn't even been opened.  Most excellent , I thought, and proceeded to

Homemade cloth napkins are easy to make; in fact, sewing cloth napkins are the easiest sewing projects I've ever attempted. For me, sewing is really, really hard. I'm terrible at it.  If the project is at all complicated, I usually make a mess of it, get frustrated, and finally hide my failed attempt somewhere.  Usually tears are involved. And humiliation.  One time, I tried to make a sock monkey, and his legs came out different lengths, and then when I tried to stuff him with fluff, his side seams busted out.  I was distraught and felt like I'd failed as a mother.  The forlorn-looking monkey was placed in a box and hidden in the back of my closet for years, until I came across him again and put him in the trash.  The sad monkey’s face still haunts me, as it felt like that monkey knew . It was one of my greatest sewing failures. But then there are cloth napkins, which console me with their simplicity.  What a useful item to have around, too - these napkins go into lunch bag