Blueberries: In the Hand and On the Brain

Last week we took the kids to pick blueberries at Larriland Farm.


The picking was considered "fair". That's because, when the pickin' is "good", the berries fall from the bush in large ripe clusters right into your hand with little to no effort. We actually had to hunt and pick them...


There were still plenty of great blueberries to be found and we had a great time picking, eating and getting lost amidst the bushes.


Then, thinking we were lost, calling out -- only to find out that everyone was only a bush or two away. It's also a great place to eavesdrop since it's very easy to hide in a blueberry field...


Not that we did any eavesdropping or snickering or giggling about it, no way, not us...

By the time we were finished, the day had gotten pretty hot...


But leave it up to the kids to find water. They were amazed by the size of the super giant sprinkler that was watering the pumpkin patch so they had to run through it...


After we got home, I was very inspired by our berry harvest so I tried a blueberry cake recipe from Apples for Jam...But, I didn't like it...


It looks pretty but it was too cake-y for me ( in this pic, I'd already cut away the bottom half of the cake). Turns out, I like the berries the best. The more berries the better. So instead, I've taken to eating them directly from the freezer.


They're like tiny blueberry popsicles which are a delight for the mouth on hot, July day.

The beautiful colors of the berries got me thinking again about how you might interpret them into needlework.


I went hunting for examples and found that there really weren't that many that I could find -- there were lots of examples of strawberries and raspberries, but blueberries in the needlearts seemed to be slim-pickin'.

Jane Nicholas interpreted blueberries into stumpwork by stitching detached buttonhole stitches around a small wooden bead...top right under the butterfly.


Of the few examples I found, my favorite, by far, was this interpretation in canvas by Needle Delights called Blueberry Torte -- it's the fourth design in the Edibles Collection. Cherry Cordial is just as yummy!


And lastly, I found lots of blueberries fashioned with felt but these by Ann at Harvest Moon by Hand were my favorite...


This ends my blueberry tour for now.

May the Blueberry of Happiness shine down upon you and be gracious to you, and may you have the chance to hold Happiness in the palm of your hand...