What's Blessing This Friday?

I was all "up and at 'em" this morning -- laundry, dishes (manual washer in this house!), baking...

Baking?!  That wasn't on the original agenda for today, but this is Day 5 of the first week of an online retreat through Abbey of the Arts, and the music following the written reflection was "Soul Cake" in a rendition done by Sting (yes, you read that correctly!) and I was inspired.

Wikipedia has some interesting information about All Souls' Day, and I managed to find this recipe, which with a bit of added egg and milk (because I couldn't get the dough to form), produced these biscuits:

While doing up the dishes, I took the opportunity to prepare some more fabric for natural dyeing -- this time with a dye bath made from the bark of another of my aging ornamental crab trees:

Left to right: fabric in vinegar/water prep bath; jar of 'bark dye'
empty dye pot.

The fabric in question is a bit of silk haboti, some silk charmeuse, some crinkle cotton, and some white-on-white damask.

After the fabric was simmered in the prep bath for about an hour, I put it into the dye pot with the "bark dye" and heated that up.  It's now simmering merrily away.  On impulse I added some un-prepped wool batting from the stash...and had to add some hot water as there wasn't enough liquid.  Alas, this likely means I've diluted the dye...oh well.  It's just a sampling!  ;-)

Meanwhile back in the sewdio, I'm attaching binding to The Door Quilt.

Binding fabric waiting to be cut

The label has been printed and will be ready to apply when I get to the bottom corner...

Before I get back to work, I'm linking up with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday...

Have a blessed weekend!