Jack has a lot of information about sausage making on his website, for several different kinds of sausage. I haven't been brave enough to try the "other" kinds yet, but I did make the fresh sausage (I don't know what y'all call it over there - over here, it comes in a plastic tube with a metal clamp on each end, by the pound. Sold in the same section as bacon.). Very easy, no gristly bits, and delish. :) Jack advocates a certain percentage of fat to meat ratio, but I don't find that so much fat is needed, just enough to hold the sausage together and keep it moist enough to be good, but not enough to float in the pan like store bought.
I use the alphabet on DWs viking machine [platinum 770] and make them on matching fabric or ribbon. has swedish alphabet also i can write 'woven by' or 'vävade av'. While the viking can do swedish words it doesn't check for spelling or grammar, which the above needs!
Oh, it's a given that if something that has less than 2% fat content more of the calories in it will come from the other stuff than the fat (unless we're talking buttered vegetables!), but it's the fat I have the problem with, not the total calorie content. And animal fats are worse than vegetable fats, as they have a more disastrous effect upon my insides!
98% fat free port sausages are better than 98% fat free beef sausages, but both are better than ordinary fat content pork sausages. I love things like lamb sausages too, but they never come 98% fat free as even the leanest lamb has more fat in it than that.
You might also be surprised at the high fat content of some things like commercial veggie burgers and sausages. Some are MUCH higher than even ordinary sausages, never mind the extra lean ones!
One reason I'm interested in hand-knitted sausages is that if I make them I have greater control on the things that go in them. I've always hated really fatty sausages, even before I had the digestive problems and needed to lose weight. Even as a small skinny child I'd cut off every visible morsel of fat from any meat I had, dig the fatty lumps out of sausages, and refused to eat salami or black pudding if there were visible lumps of fat in it. About the only fat I'd eat was the crozzled to shattering point bacon rind and really well crozzled crackling off roast pork.
What I was talking about is that if you have something that says 98% fat free, it does not mean that 100 calories' worth of it will only have 2 calories from fat.
I hear you -- I can't handle high quantities of fat either, never cared for it either, but at this point if I eat something with a high fat content it sits like lead in my stomach and makes me feel awful. I was on the fatfree.com mailing list for a while and learned a lot and got lots of good ideas.
Have you tried Finnish Makkara (sausage)? My stomach has the same sensitivities as Melinda's and Kate's and I can eat makkara. It's mostly just lean pork and a few spices; there is a variety that comes with bits of cheese embedded in the makkara. I don't know if there might be any specialty grocers near where you live, but this is well worth looking for!!! :-)
I get the June Tailor brand of the colorfast inkjet fabric sheets (sold at WalMart, among other places). Since I now make the pink dotted swiss dance skirts for the little girls at my daughter's dance company, I needed a way to make a lot of labels and those seem to work. I just made sure I followed ALL the steps to set the ink (rinse, blot, flat dry, heat set, etc.). So far, they seem to be holding up.
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