To Market, To Market and How to Get There

It has always been a dream of mine to have a market stall. Probably because I love going to markets so much myself. They seem to promise all sorts of untapped treasures. When we moved to Bacchus Marsh I was thrilled to find out that there were three markets...Darley Market, outdoors every first and third Saturday of the month. Art and Craft Indoor Market, every second Thursday of the month and a Farmers Market. The last one has since closed down but the other two continue strongly.
In order to set myself up I had to
* Get my kitchen renovated and registered by the local council
* Get myself trained in safe food handling techniques.
* Buy equipment such as digital thermometers, jam jars and lids and pans
* Work out how to label everything.

As you can see above I have three basic labels. I hand-write the ones with the red umbrella on them and they give the name of the product, its batch number(in case of recall) and its best before date.
Then on the Food Standards site here I put in the ingredients and print out a food nutrition label. I work out the % ingredients and type that up and cut and paste a label with it all on.
And I have a reel of printed address labels to show the location of manufacture.

First of all I stick on the product label. Then I stick on the address label.
Then I fold up the nutrition/contents label and secure it to the top of the jar with a circle of red cellophane and an elastic band.













To do all this forabout 30 jars, takes a couple of hours, but it is relaxing and it pleases me to see the completed product, totally hand/home made.


Back to knitting! I am halfway up the second sleeve on the "jet" cardigan which I am knitting with Bendigo 12ply Rustic. I have my heart in my mouth because I'm just about to attach the last ball(200gm) and I have all the lace edging to do too. For those of you with the book, it is pattern 1 and as you can see the lace edging takes up quite a bit of yarn. The trouble is you cant shorten the edging like you could the sleeves in order to compensate for lack of yarn and I have already had an emergency call to Bendigo and there is no more in this dyelot. I shall knit on bravely and faster in the hope that I can reach the end before it runs out!!!

Cheers Gillian