Spinning a Yarn

The weather has turned much colder in the last few weeks.  Our highs have hovered in the 30s and our lows have dipped into the teens overnight.  The days have become noticeably shorter as well and the sky is now dark by 5 pm.  This leaves a lot of indoor time for winter projects like crocheting hats and spinning new yarn.

I do have a few pounds of roving that I wanted to process, so I picked up where I left off last spring with a roll of white merino roving.  I spun the roving into thin singles and then double plied them into a soft worsted yarn.

The next step was to wind this bobbin of yarn onto a niddy noddy to make it into a skein of yarn.

A niddy noddy does two things.   First it keeps the yarn organized and untangled as it forms large loops that will become the skein.  Second it is a way to measure the length of the yarn so you have an idea of how much yarn you have to work with for a project.

From the niddy noddy, the new yarn gets plunged into a cold bath for a few hours to help set the twist in the yarn.

Setting the twist happens when the yarn fibers expand in the water.  The twist relaxes a bit and the yarn takes on a more even appearance.  I am careful not to agitate the yarn while I soak it because I don't want the fiber to felt.  After a couple of hours I gently squeeze the water out of the skein and hang it to dry for a few days.  Once it is completely dry I twist the yarn into a skein.

At this point the yarn is ready to become anything.  I can dye it any color I would like or just use it the way it is to make whatever I can dream up.  I don't have a set plan for this yarn yet.  I think this winter's goal will be to spin as much roving as I can to create a little handspun stash of yarn for all my future projects.  It will be nice to have a variety of my own handspun yarns to work with once I work my way through my fiber stash.

Bottling the Plum Wine, Round One

The first batch of plum wine that I started this summer had finally reached the stage where it was ready for bottling.  This wine was made with a red fleshed plum that I got a good deal on back in August.  Forty pounds of plums for $40 and a couple of jars of my homemade pickles.  All I had to add was a few pounds of sugar, some yeast and a few months of waiting to reach my finished product.

This lovely glass carboy holds approximately six gallons of wine when full.  To transfer this sweet treat into bottles I first had to prepare the bottles and corks.  One by one I washed and sterilized each bottle with boiling water and set them out to dry.

I was expecting about five bottles per gallon of wine, so I set out approximately thirty bottles (or equivalent) when I started transferring the wine.  I was pleasantly surprised when I needed to add a few more quart jars to the mix to catch the extra wine that I didn't have bottles for.  I ended up with about thirty five bottles worth of plum wine from this round of bottling.  The jars promptly went into the fridge for more immediate use since they were not sterile.

I did have a taste during the bottling process and was very pleased with the results.  The wine is sweet, but not overpowering and has very little dryness.  It taste like more of a dessert wine and seems to have an alcohol content to match.  It is very strong and very tasty which makes it go down easy. I will be sure to partake of this delicious treat in moderation now that I know of it's physical effects.  I'm sure it will bring plenty of holiday cheer to any party that I bring it to this winter season.

Cold Weather Canning: Tomato Sauce

The weather has been chilly for the past few days and it seemed like a good time to do something that would help warm up the house a bit.  I decided it was time to make a little more room in the freezer by making my frozen tomatoes into sauce.  The process is pretty simple, but very time consuming.

To start I put one bag of frozen tomatoes in to my big stock pot with a little bit of water and start thawing them out.  Once the first bag has melted enough I add a second and third bag until my stock pot is nearly full with thawing tomatoes.

Once all the tomatoes have melted down I run them through my food mill to remove all the seeds and skins.  Those go to the chickens for a special treat.  What I am left with is basically tomato juice.

The juice goes back into my stock pot where it continues to cook down until it reaches the thickness that I want.  This is the most time consuming part of the process as I have to be sure to keep the heat low and stir it from time to time to prevent scorching the bottom of the pot.

Once it has reached the thickness I want I start to prepare my canner and jars.  I add a tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint that I process.  I like to keep my sauce as simple as possible so that I can use it for a wide variety of dishes.

This round of sauce making yielded nine pints of sauce from approximately three gallons of raw frozen tomatoes.  I could have cooked the sauce down longer to make it a bit thicker, but I think for my purposes this is fine.  I did a second round of tomato sauce a few weeks later that resulted in thirteen pints of sauce.  That brings this years total for tomato sauce to twenty-two pints of sauce.  This was in addition to the forty-eight pints of salsa I canned this summer, the flats of tomatoes that I gave away at work, and all the yummy fresh tomatoes that I could eat.  I have to say that this was a very productive year for my tomatoes.