For some reason I got the urge to make marmalade the other night, what with all the gorgeous citrus in the grocery store lately.  I got some fancy cara cara oranges and meyer lemons to use, and then opened up my canning books to find a recipe.  It was disappointing to see that marmalade looks hard!  And time-consuming (like, several days time-consuming)!  And annoying (supreming, ugh)!  All the instructions say your marmalade will be awful unless you do all these things, including extracting your own pectin from the seeds and membranes.

In despair, I looked at the box of commercial pectin, with the quickie recipe.  Surely, it wouldn’t be too bad, right?  I rationalized that my fancy ingredients would make up for it and decided to be lazy.

Licking the spoon, I think this will be totally passable.  It set up a little hard, but it’s nice and tart, not overly sweet like many of the bad reviews out there.  I still have a cup more of the prepared fruit+rind, so I’m going to add a grapefruit and some kumquats to it and make a second batch.  As soon as I go to the grocery store for more pectin, that is.

This is the first time I’ve gotten to use the pretty Weck jars my mom got me for my birthday.  They are so cute, and I found them just as easy to use as the normal canning jars.  Even better, Hardwick’s, my local hardware store, now carries Weck jars and accessories!  So now I have an easy source for extra rubber gaskets.  I also got some of the refrigerator storage caps.

Minor canning lesson of the day: I also filled a tall skinny Weck jar and the marmalade separated into a rind-y layer and a clearer layer during processing. Next time I think I will stick to the tulip jars or the squat molds.

Now to figure out a good way to label them…

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I just got early bird discounted tickets to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show.  I’ve never been to a garden show before, but it looks fun.

Here’s a funny Beginner’s Guide to the show.

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Nothing like a snowy January day to make me want to page through my gardening catalogs and websites.

I’m trying myfolia this year.  It’s a sort of funny hybrid between social networking and garden tracking.  I even splurged and upgraded to a paid account because I kept encountering necessary features that are only available to “supporters.”  They have made it just usable enough with the free account that you use it enough to want to get the paid account, though.  I’m still adding my gardening history, but if you’re on there, I have a bunch seeds for trade if you’re interested (username maitreya).

Also trying Sproutrobot, which has a nice (free!) feature to email you when things need to be done.  However, it has a limited range of plants, and you can’t keep track of particular varieties and plantings like in myfolia.  The hand-drawn directions are really cute, though!

Gardenaut lets you put in a zip code and what plants you want to grow and outputs all the planting dates.  The main site seems out of commission, though.

The WSU Extension for King County has a ton of useful fact sheets.

Vegetable garden resolutions for the year:

• successfully start and transfer some plants
• build a cold frame (a not unrelated goal)
• finish some compost
• plant only things I want to eat
• plant primarily things that are better to grow than to buy

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I ran across the book 100 Pretty Little Projects at the bookstore the other day and was pleased to see that my old potholder pattern made the cover!  The back cover, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

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Poppytalk posted this amazing letterpress handkerchief calendar by Mink Letterpress, and I was super sad to see they’re sold out (though the artist says she might do another run!  Fingers crossed.)  So I decided to rummage through my own collection of handkerchiefs and scarves to get inspired.

This Vera one looked pretty east to copy, so I got out my watercolors.  I’ve been wanting to paint something since I came across this post on easy watercolor techniques at Gardening Gone Wild.  She suggests tracing something to get a quick start.  The white bits on the scarf from the slight registration differences between layers follows another of her suggestions to use the white paper to advantage.

Anyway, it turned out pretty sloppy, but a fun way to spend an afternoon.

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When I was visiting home last month, my mom noticed some cute earrings and hairpins in a shop.  They were obviously made from fabric-covered buttons, so I thought I would try to make her some.  I had everything already: kits and hairpins, plus some small-print fabric scraps (these are from charm squares) and E6000 glue.

I’m always kind of astonished at how quick and easy these things are, with such nice results!

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The annual calendar post.  Not as many as last year, possibly due to delaying until January to bother to get them.  I still haven’t found a new desktop calendar (I’m anxiously awaiting Geninne’s, though), so I’d appreciate any suggestions.

Lab: Rifle Paper Co. 2012 Botanical Calendar.  A splurge, but so pretty.

Craft room: Letterpress cross stitch calendar by Pistachio Press and Aesthetic Artwork.  Two great tastes that taste great together.

[Photos from the relative designers’ websites.]

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On vacation over the new year’s weekend, I tried this crochet circle-in-a-hexagon pattern from the book Crochet Adorned as a possible coaster design.  The idea being to make a few different color hexagons that you could arrange into a pattern on a table.  In this yarn, it’s a little too big, though, and maybe more appropriate as a trivet or plant pot pad.  It’s an interesting pattern where you crochet into the spaces between the stitches instead of like normal.  Gives it a little more heft and makes the rounds blend in a little more.

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