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?

Well. Let' see. I responded to some comments, but don't see those answers. I also posted my interview with Lauren Devine of Fresh Preserving but don't see that post.

This is going even more splendidly than I dreamed it would! My first little drawing thing.

O.K., here's what we'll do. This isn't the Oscars(tm) and we're not audited by those nice men in dark suits who come on to tell everyone the rules. This is my blog and, unorthodox as it may be, I'm going to change the rules midstream to try an impose some kind of order on this business. Plus, I've had a deadline move up from next week to this (again! why does this happen?!) and, well, there it is.

So. Anyone who comments in a post that happens to include Lauren Devine's name in it (I think this is the third, the repost of the interview will be the fourth) will have an entry in the contest. Comments in two such posts will result in two entries, and so forth. The drawing will be the close of business, my time, Friday.

This works, yes? I am sorry for this bloggy change-up but it's my first time and I feel that I'll take for myself a bit of forbearance (one of my all-time favorite words). We're still friends, right?

So I mentioned a bit ago how I'd had this lovely discussion with a woman named Lauren Devine of Fresh Preserving, the Ball Corporation's public face of home food preserving. We had a delightful chat that veered, in my very unjournalistic fashion, from recipe testing and development to getting started with canning to risk management and (my) whispered confessions on that point. Lauren stared with Ball as an intern and is now the company's official canning professional/cheerleader.

At the conclusion of our talk (the results of which I'll be posting in the next day or so) Lauren offered to send me a copy of The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. What a dear, I thought, and accepted on behalf of my legions of fans, adding that if she didn't mind too terribly much I might just have a little contest to pass it along. The next day two copies arrived in the mail, one inscribed to little old me. After reading the inscription I turned back to cover and noticed that Ms. Devine is a co-author of this encyclopedic home canning reference. And I hadn't known.

To those of you who don't know, this is kind of like meeting Jerry Garcia and, not realizing it, figuring him to be a lonely man away from home on business and inviting him to dinner (no, wait, I actually did this...finding out after the fact who he was and that his little band was in fact playing in town that night). Maybe it's more like unknowingly stumbling upon Martha Stewart in the local craft store and engaging in a bit of a chat over which glue gun is better for making, I don't know, whatever. Or sort of like bumping into Condoleeza Rice unawares and blasting those out of touch, inside-the-beltway folks in D.C.

Embarrassing, in other words.

I won't dwell, though, as I am not generally a dweller. Instead I think we should press on with all good intentions on this little drawing scheme. Agreed?

Here's the deal: leave a comment on this point and the post in which I relate the details of my discussion with Ms. Devine. Of all the folks who comment in both posts, I will draw one name and that person will receive a copy of The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving delivered straight to his or her door. I'll do the drawing this coming Wednesday.

What do you think? Good? This is a lovely book, filled with all kinds of neato things that can be made and enjoyed by beginners and experienced canners alike. Good luck to all!