JQuery :: Manipulating Html From A String

I need to get a some blocks of html that are contained in elements in a JSON object, remove some images and then add the updated blocks into cells in new table rows

in the JSON Object each html block is called 'htmlblock' within the html string, each img element that has to go has a class of 'imgThumb'

So far I'm here:

I get the data with $.getJSON - OK I work through the JSON object with $.each - OK I convert the text string of html to a DOM object with $.eventData=$(this.htmlblock) - OK I get rid of the images with $.eventData.remove('.imgThumb') - OK

After that I start running into problems

I have a bunch of elements from the JSON object that I have to add to the table as well - so the simplified version looks something like (#delTableBody is the tbody element that I'm adding to):

$.getJSON(eventURL, function(event){
$.each(event, function(){
$.eventData = $(this.htmlblock);
$.eventData.remove('.imgThumb');

[Code]....