I make bread and butter pickles most years (depending on the cucumber crop in my garden) and usually a batch of sweet "14 day" pickles. The bread and butters are easy -- slice them on our kraut cutter (giant madoline (sp) for shredding cabbage in industrial quantities), then add sliced onions and green peppers, soak in salt water a few hours, drain, add vinegar and sugar plus mustard seed, tumeric, and cloves. Heat to near boiling and can. Very tasty, I usually make a dozen quarts every year since the family raids my larder -- these pickles are the base for my Mother's excellent potato salad.
The "14 day" pickles are salt fermented for a week, then soaked in hot water, hot water with alum, hot water again, then a thick syrup with cinnamon sticks, cloves, and celery seed for a couple days, then canned. Very good, if horribly sweet.
I also make sauerkraut most years -- shred cabbage after removing the core, add a tsp of salt per quart and a tsp of sugar per quart if you like very sour kraut, while packing into a crock or other ceramic container -- no steel, but plastic is OK. Keep covered with water and a cloth and a weight (I use a dinner plate and a brick) to keep the cabbage submerged. If you don't, you get fruit flies and yeast growing, which is nasty. I then can it when it's sour enough.
Pickling is great!
Peter