- More nuts than usual

A week of playing with our grandsons (1 and 3 years old) in St Louis and reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer was a wonderful blog and stitch-free interlude (although my fingers did itch from time to time).

I came home refreshed, restocked the fridge, and got back to brush and cactus whacking to work off some of my daughter's great home cooking ... which included my first (but not last) taste of Pozole from Blue Apron.

When I picked up our bundled mail, it included a package full of black walnuts from Grace at Windthread. Having never made walnut dye before, I consulted with Grace and Marti, watched a few videos on YouTube, then plunked half of the walnuts into a thrift store coffee pot with some water ...

and soon had an inky brew ...

This quill pen was my first attempt using one of the many turkey feathers gifted by our Rio Grande neighbors this summer ...

The ink got darker by the hour ...

Where would I be without how-to videos like this one?

I also restocked my supply of Nana's Nuts, a double entendre that I came up with as I shared my stash last week with 3 year old Jackson, sprinkling them over our granola and yogurt each morning ... 

Pistachios, almonds and cashews
coated with maple syrup, coconut oil, brown sugar, salt and vanilla
then oven roasted for two and a half hours at 225 degrees

Last, but not least, I tried out a new idea. While I was away, I read blog posts about two patchwork quilts in progress made by Jude Hill and Judy Martin's daughter. Inspired, I started making some paperless patches following Jude's method, but it just didn't make my heart sing as I ironed one small patch after another. Beside the near-scorching of my fingertips, I itched to break beyond squares.

After sleeping on my dilemma, I woke up with the idea to cut a long strip of paper, tear strips of linen to a width slightly larger, then finger press the edges over the paper ...

iron them down ...

remove the paper ...

then fold the edges on one end ...

and cut off individual patches to be basted ...

The result was a series of patches all the same width, but with variable lengths ...

I'll have to make quite a few more before I have enough to start piecing them together, but I must say I'm having a lot more fun! And yes, there are two different linens pictured above: tan and lichen-overdyed orange.