October 12, 2008 Autumn olives, and stained glass

We've had a string of absolutely perfect early fall days. The air is crisp, but the sun still close enough to warm the day up nicely.
Since the foraging field trip I've been in a frenzy trying to harvest as many autumn olive berries as I can before they pass for the season. So far I've boiled down 5 cups of berries and frozen them. Originally I was going to make fruit leather, but realized after making the mash that I didn't have any honey or stivia, so to keep them I decided that freezing was the way to go until I'm ready to dehydrate them. This morning on my way to taking Emily to work I saw this amazing sized Autumn olive bush loaded with berries, so after dropping Emily off I harvested what turned out to be 12 cups more. Dan and I really like eating the berries as they are and since I haven't tried the leather I didn't want to commit to any more of that, and unsure about the recipe for jam/jelly, I decided the best thing to do for now was to freeze the berries whole. After spending an hour de-berrying loads of branches I now have 2 quart sized bags, and 5 sandwich sized bags full of berries ready to go. Dan effectively managed to avoid berry stripping and decided he'd rather play with the dollhouse in the tent. We're getting very excited about our two week trip to Disney World in February and since we'll be camping in Fort Wilderness with Mom, Mo, Fran and Gary we thought we'd air out the tents and make sure they were in good shape.
Since our Autumn olive hunt took us to Hyannis yesterday we decided to stop in at AC Moore. A dangerous place for both Emmy and I. Emmy has taken up knitting, and really likes making scarves from the fringy yarn. She bought 10 skeins of varying colors while we were there. While scouting around I found this absolutely beautiful (well at least I thought so) Homespun yarn and after asking both kids if they wanted something made from it, and both saying no, I decided I'd make something for myself. I chose this poncho for my most of the time winter coat, since it usually never gets really really cold here. The color is lemonade. I can't wait till it's finished...I've never knitted for myself before! http://%20http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/khs-prettyPoncho.html While we were at AC Moore I made my way over to the faux stained glass window section. I've been looking at this one particular pattern for a long time and just was never sure if I really wanted to start what looked like a really big project. I astarted collecting all the stuff needed to complete it and before I knew it found my arms filled with everything necessary. I decided to bite the bullet, and proceeded to check out. As we headed home I was eager to get the kids fed so I could see what the project would entail. Turns out not nearly as much as I was expecting, and by last night had one of the kitchens storm windows complete. Our kitchen windows face our neighbors kitchen sliders and although we really like our neighbors I think we'd both feel a little better with more privacy. The stained glass was the perfect solution and we all agree it looks great! I had a chance to work on the second one this afternoon after breakfast at John's capeside dinner and a walk on the canal to the Jetty with Mike and Dan, but I ran out of materials! I think a trip to Hyannis might be in order on Tuesday, since tomorrow we're finally going to the King Richard's faire! Anybody want to meet us there???