- Abundance

After a week of rain ...

it was no great surprise to find a riotous unfolding. 

Dewberry (a wild blackberry in the Rose family which I have long called Briar Rose, incorrectly) ...

led me to revise yesterday's patch in silhouette, as Deb Sposa's students have recently done ...

Completed on March 14

Wandering the floodplain earlier in the day, there was ample evidence of yellow evening primroses, which opened as promised at sunset ...

with the moon as my witness ...

along with the Gaura ...

which also appeared at dusk

Also as promised (to Grace), here are the results of my spring organizing, both cloth ...

and floss, which is wrapped in cloth woven during Jude Hill's Considering Weave ...

And a cloth I dyed last summer using blanket flower at the Outer Banks of North Carolina ...

had faded to pale lilac and gray. But upon finally washing it out today, it blushed as softly green ...

The camera doesn't do this justice ... it's much greener

as this newly-leafed live oak ...

I think it's destined to be today's patch, but as with so many ideas flying through my fevered brain, it will have to wait for another day before being realized (I feel French knots coming on). Update: See March 14 for Patch #72.

- Blank slate

When I made the dye sampler on Monday, I was struck by how beautifully the linen patches worked up. So I went back to my notes from Maura's dye workshop to see where she sourced it.

Google quickly found "Pickering International" and I placed an order for the minimum ten yards of 54" organic linen at $9.80 per yard (with shipping and handling the total was actually closer to $12 per yard). It was an indulgence for sure, but I'm hoping it will also be a motivator for making more precise records of future dye trials by having a more consistent starting point. Not to mention the opportunity to make more dye samplers.

So today's patch is a blank slate ...

Patch #71

full of yet-to-be-realized potential!

There's more in the good new department: enough rain this week that we've already emptied the gauge once ...

and are hoping for a little bit more before it's all over.

- Birthday season begins

Today's patch is a bit of linen from Logan's great-grandmother, Nana Ruth ...

Patch #70

because just like Logan ...

Nana Ruth loved turquoise and the sea.

Hard to believe this picture was taken twelve years ago ...

Fortunately, some things never change ...

birthday season still lasts as long as there are celebrations
and cookie dough is still the ultimate celebration food.
Happy birthday LoLo ... I owe you a batch!

- Painting the hills

My favorite Texas wildflower color isn't bluebonnet blue ...

Patch #69

it's Indian paintbrush orange ...

Photo taken at the Wildflower Center,
after which G reminded me not to step off the path

G got a chance to look up wildflowers at the National Wildflower Center ...

And I got to make some IDs of my own, including this bitterweed ...

Tetraneuris scaposa var. scaposa

plus I got another shot at capturing an Edwards Plateau thimbleweed, aka Two-flower anemone ...

Anemone edwardsiana

with its tell-tale mid-stem ruffle ...

- Singin' in the rain

Rain is always on our minds ...

Through drought and flood, we pray for it to come, but not too much.

The singer-songwriters in the Texas Hill Country echo the refrain of rain ...

"You can't eat hope and you can't drink doubt ... six years in to a seven year drought"
Seven Year Drought, Jamie Lin Wilson

"Come on clouds, don't get tired ... rain all night, rain all night"
Rain all night, Walt Wilkins and the Mystiqueros

"Peaceful sleepin's livin' proof ... nothing sounds like an old tin roof and rain"
It's only rain, Jimmy "Daddy" Davis

"It was dry in 1930, an' it was dry in '32 ... don't need a New Deal handout, a little rain'll do"
A little rain'll do, Cody Canada

So here's hoping for a week's worth of rain patches ... sweet and steady and slow.

Meanwhile, this is Don's latest assemblage ...

Originally titled "No one" ... then "One and Done ... briefly B[one] Dry ... and finally,"B-one Dry." 

The bone dominoes were one of my first By the Bridge purchases (though at the time I had no idea what to do with them). The board came from Junkology. And the the longhorn, ironically, was a gift from Virginia. The key to the joke is the key.

- 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).