I am DIYing today.
Sep. 12th, 2020 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkThe air quality here is still shit. In fact I think it's been getting worse since the high winds stopped. The smoke is still sort of gently wafting down into the valley and then not moving on. :P
The air quality maps of Oregon are dire. Eugene is in the 400s on that danger scale, which is basically "have some lung cancer!"
I have a very nice quality, huge air filter, but I gave it to my mother in law yesterday when she had the goober over, because kid. Turns out her house also leaks like a sieve, where ours was *almost* okay on just the small secondary filter. So I left it with her, and we went to buy a second small filter...only to find that, of course, there are none to be had.
So I dug through the fabric bins, double-layered some fabric over the back of a fan, and am spritzing it down with a spray bottle every half hour to keep it damp. Works pretty good so far. They'll have to go dry overnight, unfortunately, but that's still better than nothing.
I'm also making plum liqueur!
The last batch of plum jam left me with a handful of remaining plums, just enough to put into some Everclear to suck the juices out. (Because Everclear is nearly pure ethanol, it will "pull" water out from things like fruit, and it pulls all the flavor along with. The plums were hardened and sorta dryish when I pulled them out of the jar today. Weird, but cool!)
I'm waiting on the batch of simple syrup I made to cool, and then I'll sweeten and dilute it down to about 60 proof, for a strong but not overwhelming liqueur, which should be pretty good, I hope!
The air quality maps of Oregon are dire. Eugene is in the 400s on that danger scale, which is basically "have some lung cancer!"
I have a very nice quality, huge air filter, but I gave it to my mother in law yesterday when she had the goober over, because kid. Turns out her house also leaks like a sieve, where ours was *almost* okay on just the small secondary filter. So I left it with her, and we went to buy a second small filter...only to find that, of course, there are none to be had.
So I dug through the fabric bins, double-layered some fabric over the back of a fan, and am spritzing it down with a spray bottle every half hour to keep it damp. Works pretty good so far. They'll have to go dry overnight, unfortunately, but that's still better than nothing.
I'm also making plum liqueur!
The last batch of plum jam left me with a handful of remaining plums, just enough to put into some Everclear to suck the juices out. (Because Everclear is nearly pure ethanol, it will "pull" water out from things like fruit, and it pulls all the flavor along with. The plums were hardened and sorta dryish when I pulled them out of the jar today. Weird, but cool!)
I'm waiting on the batch of simple syrup I made to cool, and then I'll sweeten and dilute it down to about 60 proof, for a strong but not overwhelming liqueur, which should be pretty good, I hope!