A Busy Weekend With Lots of Sales!!!

Wheeeee, finally a great Saturday at the market for everyone, which is so gratifying. I sold several brand new items including a couple that I didn't get a chance to photograph. The blue picasso bracelet with the pewter bird, turtle, horse and feather (I call it the "Four Corners") sold right away, right out of the gate. Lady came by, picked it up, examined it... "Uh, where's the clasp?" "It rolls on." Sold.

Definitely must make more of these.

I also sold the aqua terra and crab agate necklace on the right (the necklace on the left sold quite a while ago) yesterday, matched perfectly with sterling, turquoise and sponge coral earrings. They accompanied my customer and her brand new dress to a girls' night out Beatles tribute show last night.

I went to an estate sale this morning and here are a few of my treasures. We're doing a Nostalgia show at the fairgrounds on September 13th, I think it is, so I'm buying with that in mind. Some pieces will go to our booth at the Antique Mall (Booth 800/847 if you're planning a trip our way).

Aaaaand it's jam-making season. The first strawberries are starting to come in from the fields. There were mountains of them at the market yesterday. For some reason the local grocery store has decided not to carry my favourite low-sugar no-cook gelling powder this year, so my pal George brought me 20 packages from the big city on Tuesday, which I swap for jam. 

What's the name of that Pinterest site? Pinterest Fails -- or similar, anyway. Here's my latest entry in the Pinterest Fail... well, it was a success but SO SLOW! Give me my paring knife any day.

My handy-dandy strawberry hulling setup. The mosquitoes arrived shortly after and settled in to feast on me. 

Putting the straw in strawberries...

Poke the straw through from the bottom...

Pull the core out of the straw...

And you have a neat little hole to fill with chocolate...

This doesn't show how full the bowl was, but it was ten 250ml jars' worth of strawberries mounded up.

Unfortunately, the monsoon rains we had early in the week made this batch of strawberries awfully watery, but a titch extra sugar and lots and lots of lemon juice brings out the flavour nicely. Peaches will be coming along soon. I can hardly wait. There's a type of early peach that is soooooo good as jam. Summer in a jar, especially in the dead of winter.

Thanks for looking!