Elderberry jelly is by far everyone's favorite around here and they'll be glad to know that this was a good year. I was much more organized than in previous years and picked berries as they ripened. That meant checking once a week for about a month to get them at their best. When I bought the twenty 12 oz. jars at Goodwill I thought I'd never fill them all but I very nearly did. The big jar is for my friend whose kids will sneak into the kitchen and eat elderberry jelly with a spoon. Who needs bread?
I keep coming across natural dye information that suggests using elderberry as a purple dye and last year I boiled up a dye bath from the leftover pulp from jelly making. I made up a test piece and put it by the window to see how it would hold up. Not well. Within a month it was a blah brown. Really, pokeweed dye holds up better and that dulls out too. So my advice is, don't bother with it. Make jelly.
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