New blocks and Ebay find

I have six blocks toward the blue and cream quilt now. You see all six here. I made my 'pound loss' four blocks up last night after dinner. I had planned to make them a little earlier but did some chores instead. I really like the way they look together, and can't wait to make some more. I hope the anticipation of new blocks will give me extra motivation to stick to the points!

A parcel arrived on my doorstep yesterday while I was out at lunch. It's a little ebay find that I'm totally thrilled with. This summer we anticipate our reasonably young fruit trees will start bearing fruit. In past years we have been given fruit by a friend who's family owns a fruit block, and I have lots of fun preserving and making jam. Ohh, that would be 'canning' for my US friends :-)

Well, in the past I've used a 60 year old Fowlers Vacola unit, which is great, but it's a stovetop unit, and you have to bring it up to temperature, hold it at temperature, and when you're done, you have to clean, dry and oil the unit as it's made from steel. A bit of a pain, but still worth it.

While cruising ebay, I found this electric unit that was sitting at a reasonable price. I decided to watch it, and on the final day bid for it. These units (the newest kind) retail for about $150, so I didn't want to rush out and get one. I also checked how much they'd been selling for on ebay, and the previous two (the same as this one) had gone for $102, and $80. I didn't get my hopes up that I'd get a bargain, and I told hubby I'd only bid up to about $50. Well, I got lucky, I won it for $31.55! With $20 postage, I'm totally thrilled, and for an extra bonus, it was packed with 8 x 1 litre jars! We gave it a test run last night, and it works perfectly! Today I'll give it a little clean up, and then ... rock on fruit season!