I bet you're all just aflutter wondering who won the copy of The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I'm right, yes? I can see you afluttering from here.

But! This is the moment for which you've been waiting, ducks. The lucky winner is Rachel (of blackberry jam fame). Rachel, if you would e-mail me your snail mail address at hotwaterbath AT gmail DOT com I'll get the tome out to you right away. Congratulations and happy canning!

I hope all who hoped to win will stick around through the summer and experience a little canning company. We'll pickle, we'll jam, we'll dice and slice...fun for all, but especially those who want to make something.

A bit of clean-up before tackling our next adventures:

1) It occurs to me that my current blog layout looks horrible. I liked it for a while then we got a new computer with one of those big ole' screens and it didn't work so I tweaked and now it doesn't look nice on any screen. I'll work on that.

2) Melissa asked if I'd been reading Stephanie Meyer's paranormal romance. No, but thanks for the tip. I've been cuddling up with Kresley Cole, J.R. Ward, Charlaine Harris and Michelle Rowen and will now happily add Ms. Meyer to the list. Between these and my alarmingly large Regency habit, I may never get to real cult-chah again. Oh, don't look at me like that. I've also been reading a lot about Abigail Adams and white holes, so it's not like I've totally chucked serious reading. Just mostly.

3) I have a little tradition of assigning myself summer projects. One year I read nothing but E.M. Forster (those days are apparently over; see also point number two, above), another year I needle pointed wildflowers on cocktail napkins. Then there was the summer that I drank only G&Ts, each made with a different brand of gin (not all my projects are of a self-improvement nature). This year I've decided to put my Netflix subscription to good use and watch as many movie and/or television adaptations of the works of Jane Austen as I can find. Brainiac is afeared for his movie watching life, groaning every time one of the red envelopes arrives in the mail (although I believe that he secretly enjoys the spectacle, entreating this or that character by yelling at the screen the way he might in reaction to an ill-conceived football play. Gives me a giggle, actually) but I think that movies are an excellent project for the Now in which I find myself. It's possible to knit, pit cherries, snap beans, needlepoint, play Battleship, write letters, coo over block towers and, yes, blog all while comparing and contrasting the various approaches in Austenolatry.

So, busy as a bee. You?