Jostaberry Jelly

During a stop at the local fruit stand I noticed jostaberries in the fridge.  I'd never heard of them.  Turns out (according to Wikipedia and other internet sites I found), they are a cross between currants and gooseberries.  I bought some to make jam or jelly out of.  Unfortunately, the pectin package didn't have a recipe, but I was able to find a recipe online for blackcurrant jelly and basically made it up as I went since the amounts and pectin were different than in the recipe.  Here are the jostaberries:

I mashed them up with a potato masher I picked up at a local second hand store.

They had little twigs attached but I figured since I was straining them, it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of  things and left them in.

After a couple false starts, I was ready to tackle the actual jelly.  More and more when I do canning I'm trying to use jars I have around, since they often work just as well as commercial jam jars, they are free, and then it doesn't break your heart when no one reuses them or returns them.  Isn't it a motley collection?  Sure, they don't look as pretty as commercial jam jars, but I'm not selling the jelly!

Every time I make blackberry jam, I think 'wow, the stuff has such a beautiful colour' and keep meaning to try dyeing with it.  I even found a website that had some helpful tips to dyeing with blackberries.  This time I just went for it.  I grabbed a white T-shirt that was starting to look grubby, put it in a pot with the berry remnants, some salt and brought it to a boil.  It turned a lovely fuschia colour, but more importantly, where there were those horrible yellow armpit stains (like I said, the T-shirt was grubby), the dye was a blue colour.  That prompted me to recall that alum is used as a mordant.  I grabbed my stick of antiperspirant and slathered some on randomly across the bunched up fabric in the pot.  The dye in those areas turned a blue-purple colour.  I've since washed the T-shirt and it has remained a faint blue-purple-grey, with darker areas where the antiperspirant was applied.  Neat!

Above is the front of the T, and below is the back :