- Taking off a week

Sometimes I feel like the rabbit in Disney's Alice in Wonderland ...

Patch #67 Reverse Applique

Which is to say, once again, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late." So (finally) here's a peek at (all) the wooden houses Don made as I see them from my stitching chair ...

the windows of which inspired today's patch.

Also belated is the subject of today's post title, which usually gets posted on Saturday ...

but this time I re-did last week's weather patches after realizing the split sunshine/cloud patches just weren't working for me. The week I took off is at the bottom of the picture (I know, bad pun).

Last, and finally done after thinking about it for four months, is a dye patch sampler from Maura Ambrose's workshop in November. Here making split patches of alum mordant and alum+tannin mordanted cloth worked just fine ...

Thankfully, the silk row proved less trouble than I anticipated as I realized I could baste each slippery piece to a piece of fine linen to stabilize it. You can see it best from the back ...

where the linen-lined silk patches are on the far left

- The fall season

Green is the color of spring ...

Patch #66

but I could be forgiven for thinking it's actually fall ...

as hundreds of live oak leaves turn brown and flutter down with the barest breath of wind. Fortunately, the leaves are being pushed off by the rapidly swelling buds of new leaves that will soon emerge ...

Green is also the color of dinner ... a soup recipe cobbled together from two sources. One called for boiling the aromatics, the other for sautéing, one called for stock, the other for water, one suggested chicken, the other pork, and on and on.

So I made up my own recipe and since Don liked it enough to ask for a repeat, I thought I'd best write it down.

Pozole Verde for two (no leftovers, but easily doubled)

1/2 medium onion

1 medium poblano pepper

1 large clove of garlic

4 small to medium tomatillos

1/4-1/2 tsp. each chipotle powder, smoked paprika, cumin and coriander

2-3 cups chicken stock

1 14-16 oz can white hominy, drained (or better yet, fresh corn cut off the cob)

2 cups cooked chicken (rotisserie leftovers) and/or leftover grilled pork cut into small bite size pieces

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

Chop the onion and poblano, saute in olive oil with a whole peeled clove of garlic for 2 minutes.

Add roughly chopped tomatillos and sprinkle with 1 tsp. of mixed spices (add more if you like a lot of heat). Continue to saute 4-6 minutes until tomatillos are tender. Remove garlic clove, put through a garlic press, and add back to the pan.

Stir in 1 cup of stock and a handful of fresh cilantro leaves. Purée in a blender or food processor.

Return purée to pan, add more stock, chicken and drained hominy. Cook at medium heat until gently simmering, 5-10 minutes.

Saute pumpkin seeds in olive oil with a pinch of salt and a sprinkle of spice mixture. Stir until seeds toast and begin to pop, about 2 minutes.

Garnish soup with lime wedges,cilantro, chopped avocado, sautéed pumpkin seeds, radish slices, and sour cream added to taste.

- Sugar coated

It was a (cochineal) pink day today ...

Patch #65

which is usually not my go-to color, but this cochineal linen patch was the perfect stand-in for the pink evening primroses (which bloom in the morning) along the ranch roads.

And what could be more sweet than a Disney movie complete with a bunny rabbit protagonist ...

Pre-movie chicken dancing (shoulda been the bunny hop)

This was my first time at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters in Austin, where every two seats share a table and they deliver your drinks and popcorn ...

What fun!

- If I had a hammer

It's a G day, so orange is in order ...

Patch #64 (completed 3/14)

Not quite done, but almost. 

The inspiration came from a wall built around Meg and Paul's HVAC unit ... the happy result of some leftover stone at the building site next door and the offer to put it to good use by the builder.

It was amazing to watch the stonemason creating ...

with nothing more than a tape measure, a level, a trowel, and a hammer ...

his only protection a canvas cover on one thigh, no gloves ...

G was inspired to get out his tools as we watched ...

a morning's work well done ...

and a pattern worth remembering ...

- Equinox

Today was my personal equinox: the day on which I switched from waiting all morning for things to warm up before working outside in the afternoon, to working outside in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat (with apologies to those of you in northern latitudes, it was 80 degrees F at 4:00 pm, so I've also switched from jeans to capris).

More on that later, but first ...

Patch #63

This pale yellow patch was mordanted with alum, then immersed three times in agarita wood chip tea brewed in an old coffee pot ...

I think I'll try contact dyeing the next time as much of the color came out in the wash.

And here's the promised re-revision of sunset Patch #54 ...

Now, back to the equinox ... did you know that there is not, in fact, equal night and day all over the world on the first day of spring (which is to say, the first day of fall for those living down under)? It was something I had assumed, wrongly as I recently discovered ...

Sunrise and sunset times for San Marcos, TX

As you can see from this timeanddate.com chart, equal day and night actually occurs between March 15 and 16 in my neck of the woods. But wait ... it gets better (or more confusing, as the case may be). Because here's what timeanddate.com says ...

You can go to the website to plug in your location and find out when your own personal equinox is and/or click here if you really, truly want to know more about the whole not-exactly-12-hours thing.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature has no doubt that spring has already arrived in the Hill Country. Today's picture walk included the first bluebonnets in the neighborhood ...

Evening primrose in early morning repose (hence the name) ...

Redbud (I think ... trees aren't my strong suit) ...

Close up

and the soon-to-be blooming Texas mountain laurel, so different from the mountain laurel that was always my favorite on the East Coast ...

This smells like grape bubble gum when blooming ... not my favorite fragrance

Plus micro-mini blooms easily overlooked and as yet unidentified ...

All this in just one day ... which is why I've realized I'm not going to be creating patches for the first appearance of each flower. I'm just going to relax and enjoy the view (while taking some dye runs along the way).

- Playing by the rules

Sometimes the day's patch is the last thing I do ...

Patch #62

Today I settled for a simple purple patch to recall this beauty ...

Anemone, possibly heterophylla

because earlier attempts at a reverse appliqué homage to this flower ...

False Garlic aka Crow Poison (sorry Mo)

didn't make the cut (so to speak) ...

All in all, it was a wonderfully full day ... a trip to the thrift store yielded two ceramic pots (Don's finds), a $3 Sibley bird book (originally $39.95), and a Mirro cookie press (also $3).

After our usual salad lunch, the afternoon was spent whacking cactus. However, when I find one like this, it ends up in a pot rather than the compost ...

Prickly pear, with a curved pad like I've never seen before

and I made time for a picture walk, spotting this flower for the first time this year ...

Probably a variety of bitterweed,
but for sure one of many LYFs aka "Little Yellow Flowers"

and a riot of goldeneye phlox, now well-established ...

I also made my own ricotta for the first time (harder than I expected), which went well with homemade pasta and sauce to make a pretty darn good lasagna.

Oh, and we FaceTimed with both daughters and respective grandchildren this morning and this evening.

Which led me to reflect on the task I've set myself of making a mere two patches a day. How hard could that be, right? But today brought home the realization that there isn't always time to do experimentation and embellishment while ending up with an acceptable (to me) piece at the end of the day.

So I'm hereby giving myself permission to bend my rules a bit from time to time, because this is supposed to be fun after all. Therefore, stay tuned for the removal and replacement of that dratted sunset patch from last week. I can't wait!

- Super Tuesday?

In Texas, you don't have to register your party affiliation, although voting in a primary tethers you to that party for two years. This year I made the (arguably unethical) choice to vote in a party I don't usually support in order to vote against a candidate by choosing the least objectionable in a long slate of bad actors.

Really, I would much have preferred this ...

Patch #61

On the brighter side, my first bit of agarita cloth came out well and I'm getting ready to do a second run with alum mordant to see what difference that might make.

The varying hues of naturally-dyed yellows from pomegranate, prairie tea, etc. are giving a wonderful subtlety to the weather patches. And as you can see, today was once again cloudy turning to sunshine ...

Likewise, Don brightened my day by finishing a frame made from an old screen door and milk painted ...

to hold my last By the Bridge purchase: a tile knockoff of Gustav Klimt's Embrace ...

I especially like this relict bit of joinery on the side of the frame ...

- Sunshine on a cloudy day

I've been trying different ways of combining cloudy gray with sunny yellow on my weather patches since our Hill Country days often start off cloudy, but end up sunny. Previous attempts were somewhat successful, but not much fun to make. Today, that changed, so much so that I made a full-size patch to mark the breakthrough ...

Patch #60

I did debate in my mind whether to put the morning clouds on the top or the bottom, but on the weather patches themselves I've gone with putting the grey to the left and the yellow to the right ...

Perfect timing as the past two days have been perfect examples of cloudy mornings turning into glorious afternoons ...

Luckily, the sun came out in time to shine on both the January and February strips of daily patches ...

Then I put them on the bed, where I think they may someday become a part of a full quilt ...

Of course I've got a long way to go, but the biggest hurdle was overcoming my decades-long aversion to doing patchwork and quilting ... so contemplating a full-size quilt is truly a leap of faith (pun intended).

Never say never.

My patchplay is admitedly a bit eccentric, but I love the serendipity of it when the two strips are brought together ...

crescent moons ...

lighthouse and anchor ...

grasses and wildflowers ...

and the arcs of sotol barbs and migrating sandhill cranes.

For now, I've hung the strips from a door frame in the living room until they can be joined by some additional months ...

• and I still don't like the sunset patch from last week (sigh)