- Time out

Addendum: Post from LEAF 2015.

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Today was a play day, driving through the Hill Country wildflowers to the Llano Earth Art Festival, home of the National Rock Stacking Championships. Yeeeeee-haw!

Of course, we also stopped for an antique store or two along the way.  So in lieu of making a patch today, I found the inspiration for one ...

A rather worn, heavy linen, sorta vintage dust catcher ... um, dresser scarf. But what I loved (beside the $2 price tag) was this ...

The green stenciling has faded, but still ... it caught my fancy

We also scored a couple of copper pots. This lovely ...

beautiful hand-hammered copper ...

Although I'm a tad skeptical about the 1800s dating

And a double-wide copper washtub ...

Oh yes, we finally made it to the festival. Enjoy the sights ...

Notice the feldspar veins ...

which converge on the rock stack

And coming soon to the floodplain ...

Because really, I think we can find enough rocks!

- 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!