We are busy-busy today, preparing for a full house and photo shoot this weekend.
This morning I made strawberry jam, with tiny local strawberries that I snagged at the Farmers Market. Actually, I didn’t exactly ingratiate myself to the other market shoppers when I took the last six quarts of berries but it was totally worth it. These were the tastiest little gems I’ve ever had! We ate them by the handful. Then I made a strawberry sangria Tuesday and a delicious dessert with strawberries, mascarpone cheese and homemade vanilla wafers. And now there are 5 little pots of strawberry jam cooling on my window sill so we can enjoy them even longer.
I also made a giant batch of my granola since we will be feeding 10-15 people all weekend. To jazz it up a bit, I added dried apricots, blueberries and cherries- along with the usual dried cranberries- and used almonds, walnuts and pumpkin seeds as well. It’s the loveliest granola I’ve ever made and crazy delicious.
Meanwhile, Zac made two Pullman loaves (recipe coming next week by special request) and yogurt, cleaned the house, made the beds and ran to the grocery store for more provisions.
Caroline is knitting like a fiend to get her last garment finished in time to be modeled and photographed this weekend. The pictures are for our Fall/Winter pattern books. I can’t reveal too many details yet but I can tell you that the yarns are SPECTACULAR, as are the designs. (I’ll post some sneak peeks over the weekend.)
The weather took pity on our models this weekend. Wearing sweaters and accessories designed for winter in Virginia in June could have made for a brutal, sweaty photo shoot, but we have been blessed with days sunny days in the 70s all weekend.
I’ve become so accustomed to always working a two seasons ahead that I sometime forget where we are in the year in real life. The other day I was lamenting the heat and humidity but started to take comfort in the fact that it would be over soon. Then I realized that we are only at the start of summer. It was kind of demoralizing.
Wish us luck this weekend! We have a lot of shots to get and only three days to get them. Since our last photo shoot was so fun I’m really looking forward to this weekend. There’s nothing like a group of talented, brilliant, hilarious people getting together to put on a show.